In the recent Time magazine article about the world’s most influential chefs, there were many omissions, but among the most important of those in France who weren’t mentioned is surely chef Christian Constant. He trained the whole generation of chefs who created modern French bistro cooking, Yves Camdeborde (Le Comptoir du Relais), Christian Etchebest (La Cantine du Troquet and others), and Franck Baranger (Le Pantruche), and talented young chefs continue to emerge from the kitchens of his constellation of restaurants–Le Violon d’Ingres, Le Cafe Constant and Les Cocottes, on the rue de l’Universite in the 7th arrondissement.

The latest Constant student to spread his wings is Brazilian born Eduardo Jacinto who recently opened Le Pario, a handsome new bistro in the 15th arrondissement in a former cafe. I actually heard about it from Carla, a Brazilian friend who lives in London and who was very keen to try it while she was in Paris on a business trip, so we arranged to meet there on a rainy week night, and aside from the pleasure of discovering a new restaurant, I was really looking forward to seeing Carla again, since she’s the only friend I’ve ever made as a result of being seated side-by-side during a long flight from Rio to Paris many years ago.

She got teary looking out the window at beautiful Rio as the plane took off, and so when she struck up a chat when dinner was served, I was not only happy to provide some distraction to a distraught young woman, but inevitably curious about what was causing so much emotion. It turned out that she was moving to Toulouse to live with a new boyfriend, a Frenchman she’d met on the beach a few months earlier, and never having been to France before, she was full of questions about the country. I think I put her at ease when I told her that I, too, had made an impetuous move or two during my life for romantic reasons, but discretely avoided her question as to whether or not those relationships had worked out, since they didn’t. So instead I said that I regretted nothing, which I don’t, because it was only by having taken a chance on an unknown future that I ended up with the very happy life I have in Paris today. Well, Carla only lasted a year in Toulouse, but today is happily married to a delightful Englishman and has a terrific job as an art director at a big ad agency in London.

When I arrived at Le Pario, she was chatting away in Portuguese with one of the waiters and introduced me as her “American airplane friend,” which is the first time I’ve ever heard myself described that way before. In any event, the solidarity she’d established with the staff meant we were waited on with kid gloves all evening, but even if she wasn’t so attractive and Portuguese speaking, I’m sure the service would have been more or less the same, since the young staff here are warm, friendly, alert, and very eager to please.

With its globe lights, service bar, and heavy velvet drapes at the door, Le Pario immediately seemed like a settled in sort of restaurant that had been around for a longtime, and it was full with a crowd of men and women in well-cut tweed jackets, who I guessed might have followed the chef to his new digs after enjoying his cooking in the 7th arrondissement. So we settled in over glasses of white wine and looked at the menu, which was an appealing roster of contemporary French dishes that very much recalled chef Jacinto’s former master.

Though Carla was a little let-down not to find anything Brazilian on the menu, the waiter offered that they do serve feijoada on Saturday nights and also told us that the restaurant’s name is a contraction of Paris and Rio. So she ordered a tartare of sea bass and oysters to start, and I went with the artichoke veloute with a cepe-and-bacon stuffed ravioli. If her tartare was well-made, it certainly wasn’t breaking any new ground, while my soup exhibited a disappointing absence of artichoke and instead tasted most of warm cream. The ravioli stuck to the bottom of the bowl was pleasant enough, but also timidly seasoned.

With rain streaking the window next to our table, Carla confided that she still dreads the arrival of the European winter, “all those months of wet and grey that make people so grumpy,” and also that she misses what she described as “American exuberance–in both of the Americas, the people are so much livelier and less reserved than they are in Europe,” but she brightened up considerably when her wild duck breast on a bed of figs stewed in Port arrived. Cooked perfectly rare, it had a beautifully made fully flavored sauce of roasting juices and gizzards and the compote had a winsome high Victorian seriousness that brought old-school London men’s clubs to mind.

My cod steak came with an unfortunate ‘crust’ of potato chips, a gimmicky garnish that added nothing to an otherwise pleasant piece of fish, and the accompany jus de viande reminded me again that Jacinto had worked for Constant, since this sort of pairing is a signature of his cooking. It was pleasant enough, but lacked any culinary distinction that might have made it memorable. Instead, I intuited that while Jacinto is a good cook, he remains very much a student of his former master. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’d like to see him reference his Brazilian roots a little bit more, in the same way that the many Japanese chefs cooking French food in Paris still manage to infuse it with a subtle touch of their country’s exquisitely refined culinary culture. I suspect, however, that Jacinto will become a more authoritative chef a few changes of menu from now, and for the time being he’s working with excellent produce and certainly knows how to run a restaurant well.

I concluded with an excellent selection of cheeses from the superb cheesemonger Laurent Dubois, who has a shop nearby, and Carla finished up with a fig-and-marscapone tart on a sable base with a red-fruit coulis. She enjoyed it a lot, too. Then after a warm farewell in lushly whirring Portuguese, we stepped outside and opened our umbrellas. “He cooks like a man who was very close to his grandmother,” said Carla. “His food is sweet and gentle and good, but maybe he needs to be a little naughtier.” I agreed with this shrewd assessment of our meal, and then Carla added, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were in Rio and could go for a walk on the beach barefoot right now There’s just too much wet pavement in my life these days.” And with that, I bid my Brazilian airplane friend good night, and was certain she’d return to her hotel near the Porte de Versailles to dream about romping in some warm Atlantic waves in a bikini. One way or another, Carla is the nicest thing Air France has ever done for me, and I’ll definitely be going back to Le Pario some Saturday night for some feijoada.

Le Pario, 54 avenue Emile Zola, 15th, Tel. 01-45-77-28-82. Metro: Charles Michel. Open Monday-Saturday. Closed on Sunday. Average 35 Euros.

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An almost universally obeyed tenet of the canon of contemporary tourism unfailingly has tourists shopping for a really good view of any place they visit. I suspect this quaint habit dates back to the era of hot air balloons and improvements in the technology of fair ground rides, which made it possible for anyone with a couple of coins to thrillingly see way over the tree tops for the first time, but beyond that there’s probably always been something refreshingly if head-spinningly humbling about a really good view, since they have a way of putting us in our place. 

  In North American cities, meals with views of the dazzling tentacular metropolis below are a dime a dozen, which is why dining with a view strikes many people as hay-seed corny shading to tacky, but as far as I’m concerned I love a great view while dining. The real problem is that no one needs to be told that it’s usually impossible to find a great meal and a great view in the same place.

   Or do they In Paris, there’s Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, of course, where the food is good but the prices can induce oxygen deprivation, and of course the other problem here is that you don’t get to enjoy Paris’s most famous landmark, the Eiffel Tower, bien sur, as part of the view since you’re inside it. And this is why I went off to dinner at Ciel de Paris on 56^th floor of the Tour Montparnasse, the seventies vintage high rise opposite the Gare Montparnasse that’s perhaps the most relentlessly loathed building in Paris for dinner the other night, with great curiosity.

One of my oldest French friends, Christophe, a prosperous pharmacist from Bordeaux who’d once been a ballet dancer, was coming to town with his new second wife, and they’d booked for dinner here. “Alec, I know it’s terribly touristy but Stephanie hasn’t been to Paris since she was fifteen, so I thought it might be fun.” I assured him that no excuses were necessary and quietly resigned myself to the fun of meeting the new wife—my guess was that she’d be a busty blonde, as compensation for what I was certain would be a very ordinary meal at best.

  Well, suffice it to say that I was wrong, full stop. Arriving, the restaurant, where I’d once gone for an ill-fated drink many years ago, had been stylishly renovated (by French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance) with a sort of appealingly campy seventies décor entire appropriate to the Tour Montparnasse—flying saucer cut-out lighting, etc., and Stephanie turned out to be chic brunette who owned a bookstore and who talked about her passion for novelist Jonathan Franzen for the first half-hour we were together.

  Over a good and surprisingly reasonably priced bottle of Champagne, the views of Paris were magnificent, too. When we got around to it, the menu read rather Business Class, but chef Christophe Marchais delivered a fine surprise with a starter of dressed crabmeat with a rich and ruddy gelee d’etrilles (crabs) for me, smoked salmon with an interesting millefeuille of celery root and Granny Smith apple for Stephanie and escargots with little beignets of boned pig’s feet for Christophe. 

  Main courses were pleasant, too, including a perfectly cooked filet of beef in truffle sauce with a very clever ‘risotto’ of finely diced Charlotte potatoes for me, steamed turbot with baby spinach and a seaweed sabayon for Stephanie, and lobster with black rice and fava beans with an vanilla emulsion for Christophe. This was well-conceived and executed fun festive food that avoided the pitfalls of being frilly and silly, which is what too often happens in high-altitude settings.

  A well-served plate of cheeses came from Quatrehommes, and Stephanie’s chocolate dessert looked like a little model of a Le Corbusier’s villa—all planes and panes, but was delicious. Working in tandem with Christophe Marchais, chef pâtissier Baptiste Méthivier’s desserts are studiously art-directed but also delicious.

   So will I be rushing out the door to eat at Ciel de Paris again soon Probably not, but that’s because I live in Paris. On the other hand, I’d certainly send visiting view hunters here, since the food and service are good, and the prix-fixe menus make it relatively affordable for a meal with such gulpingly good views of the Eiffel Tower and all things beyond.

33 Avenue Maine, 15th, Tel. 01-40-64-77-64, Metro: Montparnasse. Open daily. Prix-fixe menus: 65 Euros, 114 Euros. Late night supper menu (after 11pm): 44 Euros, 50 Euros. Average a la carte 120 Euros.

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If you write about food, there just have to be alot of feral moments, or hours, every week where your passion for taste trumps absolutely everything else you should be doing. These can’t be planned, they just happen. And I love it when they do. Since it’s been raining and cold in Paris for weeks on end now, the other day, I fired up the computer, made a double espresso, read the NY Times, the Washington Post, and lots of other stuff, went back into the kitchen to make another tall Moroccan tea glass full of nerve thunder, and suddenly found myself spending the next three hours cooking up an impromptu black-bean soup that used up a lot of new garlic, two must-eat-now fennel bulbs, lots of pimenton, and all of the stock that I’d made from simmering a winter’s worth of old Parmesan rinds with a ham bone and some fennel seeds for an entire Sunday. I didn’t use a recipe, I just cooked on a hunch, adding a can of Italian plum tomatoes, some of the wild oregano I’d harvested in Greece last summer, and a little bit of thyme.

I chopped, and I stirred, and I skimmed, and I tasted and tasted, and finally, once the beans were soft, I went back to work, let the whole shebang cool down, and got a lot of work done knowing that I’d have a pretty amazing lunch ahead of me. And the soup was just superb, so good, in fact, that I probably should have written down what I was doing, but I didn’t, so it’ll be sort of a one-off until the next time I find myself with all of the same ingredients and the same manic desire to cook.

In a similar vein, if you stop by this site from time to time, you know that I go to restaurants a lot, and you also know that I love them, but the vigilance of eating in a restaurant for professional reasons is often at odds with the off-the-cuff pleasure of sitting down at the table with friends and just having a good meal, a good time. What reminded me of this was the terrific dinner I had the other night at Axuria. One of Bruno’s oldest friends in the world, a lovely lady pharmacist with whom he grew up in the same small city in the north of France, lives just across the street from this restaurant and runs the nearby Pharmacie Boucicault. So I think she was probably the one who mentioned that a good restaurant had popped up their neighborhood. One way or another, Bruno’s working like a mad man on a huge consulting project in the 15th right now, and often runs late. Since I’m writing another book and he’s so busy, we actually even end up with an empty fridge from time to time, which is just about the worst thing that can happen in a life where you and your partner are sane, solvent and heathy.

But when it sort of did the other night, I suggested we go to Axuria, since my Metro ride from home would give him the time to finish his work by about 9.15pm, and then we’d hopefully meet for a good feed. Arriving, the trendy lounge decor of this restaurant made me a little wary, but the welcome was warm and a quick eyeball of the menu made me hopeful. Agreeing to knock the edges of our mutually macramed nerves, we ordered glasses of Champagne, which was excellent and came with hot miniature grated-cheese topped wands of pastry and excellent ham. The dining room was packed, too, always a good sign, and from where I was sitting, I was also able to see just how successful the service was. Even though there were probably 60 people in the room, no one ever poured their own wine, faced an empty bread basket or idled too long over an empty plate.

We ordered, and since they were so busy, we started with an excellent the-kitchen-needs-time complimentary first course of fish soup that tipped its hat at chef Olivier Amestoy’s origins for having such a racey but quiet nervous system of piment d’Espelette at the bottom of deeply reduced and beautifully made fish stock. The white Gaillac, one of the best buys on the list at 27 Euros and a favorite of mine, was a charmer with the soup, too, but also made us happy with our starters, an exquisite composition of seared foie gras and artichokes barigoule for me, and a swell dish of “BBQ” gambas (prawns) on a bed of quinoa for the infinitely more health-alert than I am Bruno (I’d hop into the Seine tomorrow morning if I ever saw myself headed for an ‘assisted living’ situation where the bread comes sealed in little plastic pillows, rice pudding is the recurring dessert, and a request for a glass of wine would elicit a lot of you-naughty-oldster tutting from a bunch of nurses who were otherwise quietly doing tequilla shots around the corner).

Health–the whole concept winds me up, since I’ve stopped doing so many things I used to enjoy to kneel at its altar. In any event, I can’t imagine that my brilliant and long-suffering MD (“Alec, more exercise, less cheese, less wine, less meat, less salt, less…”) would have ever raised an eyebrow at the likely farmed but still good sea bass stuffed with herbs and Swiss chard in a pastry wrapper on a bed f potato puree that I had as a main course, or the unrelentingly nutrition-conscious Bruno’s swordfish steak in a lemony sauce with spring vegetables. Both were impeccably well-cooked–we actually discussed the advisability of the swordfish, since it always comes to the table overcooked, and beautifully seasoned.

When the amiable Monsieur Amestoy came out to greet a couple of tables–aside from his good cooking, this intimate place in a quiet residential neighborhood only stands a chance of working if the locals like him, I nearly grabbed his apron strings to have a chat. Turns out this awfully nice guy is a good-natured Basque who most recently cooked at Chez Les Anges before deciding to go out on his own.

So how did we end up here, the charming Monsieur Amestoy parried, and Bruno grabbed the bone and told him about his dear friend the pharmacist, whom he of course knew and liked. Echoing things that she’d said about running a successful neighborhood business, he told us that he’d wanted to drop the souffle that Bruno was imminently to be served from the menu, but the regulars were having none of that. “What I know is that good cooking is maybe half of what will make this restaurant work,” said Amestoy. “You can’t run a successful restaurant without liking people and wanting them to be happy, and you also can’t forget that the meal begins the moment someone comes through the front door. Do you feel relaxed Do you feel happy This sets up your meal, bien sur.”

Whie we were so happily chattering away, our desserts showed up, and M. Amestoy immediately excused himself. “Enjoy, please, while they’re fresh and warm,” and so we did. I loved my moelleux caramel au beurre salé, crème glacée noisettes, although I sort of wanted to see a flood of melted salted butter caramel spill into the plate when I cut into it–in fact, I’d like to die in a flood of melted salted butter caramel, but it was still quite good. And Bruno had the souffle, and I could see by the furrowed V between his brows that he didn’t want to be interrupted during the first minute or two after he’d doused it with the accompanying shot of Grand Marnier. So I waited. “You know what’s nice is that I finally enjoy souffles. All of those years in the north of France when they were the baited breathe grande finale to first communion lunches and other soi-disant important meals almost ruined them for me by association, but they’re actually such a treat.” I dug spoon in too, and yes, they are awfully nice. Just like a really serious, well-drilled, and honest neighborhood restaurant in Paris, Axuria, for example. It’s a place I’d cross town to eat at again soon, especially with our most local friends Carole and Laurent.

Axuria, 54 avenue Felix Faure, 15th, Tel. 01-45-04-57-59. Metro: Boucicault. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Two-course lunch menu 22 Euros, Two-course dinner menu 26 Euros (35 Euros for three courses). Average a la carte 40 Euros.

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L’ECAILLEUR @ Bob Peterson

Occasionally I’d walk by one of these addresses, muse sentimentally over great meals and good times had there in the past, and wish that someone would set these places right, which is why it was with great interest that I read that they’d recently been taken over by Garry Dorr, the son of Willy Dorr, founder of the very successful Bistro & Compagnie chain of bistros, Bistro de Breteuil and Bistro des Deux Theatres among them, where you get a set-price menu of aperitif, half bottle of wine, starter, main, dessert and coffee for 39 Euros. Garry Dorr, 26, is a graduate of the celebrated Lausanne Hotel School, and on the basis of dinner at the Montparnasse branch of Le Bar a Huitres the other night, he’s not only a very smart guy but an aces restauranteur, too.

Arriving without a reservation, Bruno and I sipped a complimentary kir in the vestibule for less than five minutes and then were ushered to a table for four, a real treat for two, since nothing abets the appetite like some room to spread out and relax. Then we looked at the menu, and I was thrilled by the way that it had changed. The indifferent and rather anonymous assortment of oysters of yore had gone, to be replaced by a tempting selection of first-rate ones, including Prat ar Coum from ostreiculteur Yvon Madec in Brittany, Gillardeau’s, and even oysters from the Etang de Diana in Corsica (they’re some of the best I’ve ever eaten). Since the menu offers oysters par la piece, or individually, instead of forcing you to order a standard-issue seafood platter, we tather piggishly decided on a dozen Prat ar Coum, a dozen Gillardeau, and six Corsican oysters with an order of crevettes rose (cooked pink shrimp from Madgascar) to start.

Crevettes rose from Madagascar @ Bob Peterson  With a good bottle of white Menetou-Salon at 29 Euros, this was a superb feast, since the oysters were impeccably fresh and perfectly shucked. I was also impressed that the waiter suggested we eat them in terms of their gradated salinity, starting with the Gillardeau, continuing with the Prat ar Coum, and concluding with the Corsican oysters. Bread from Poujauran and Echire butter round out the pleasure here, and I was also surprised to notice that the table salt is pink salt from the Himalayas, the white pepper “hand-picked in the Malabar region,” and the olive oil from the Chateau d’Estoublon near Les Baux de Provence. In short, much to my surprise, Le Bar a Huitres has become a real stickler for quality, and so an absolutely terrific place for a spur-of-the-moment shellfish feed during the holidays.

Main courses were very good, too. I loved my nacreous filet of cod with aioli, and Bruno’s sole meuniere was beautifully cooked and prepared table-side. I finished up with a perfectly aged Saint Marcellin from the grouchy Mere Richard in Lyon, somewhat curiously served with black cherry preserves, while Bruno went for a second dose of gastro theater with crepes Grand Marnier. I had my doubts about the crepes, and so was very surprised to find that they honestly tasted as though they’d been recently made.

All told this was a very good meal for a very fair price–mind you, fish is expensive in Paris these days for reasons of depressing obviousness, to wit, there’s not a lot of wild fish left to catch. And if Le Bar a Huitres isn’t a destination restaurant per se, it’s terrific last-minute choice for anyone who hasn’t had the time to book ahead of time and wants a fine fish feed. Aside from their Montparnasse outpost, they also have branches near the Bastille, the Place des Ternes and in the Latin Quarter.

Le Bar a Huitres, 112 boulevard du Montparnasse, 14th, Tel. 01-43-20-71-01. Metro: Vavin. Open daily. Average 50 Euros.

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For some years now, there’s been a gastro duel between the 11th and 15th arrondissements as to which part of Parisian turf is the ultimate redoubt of the new Paris bistro, and with the recent opening of Le Casse-Noix, I’d say that the 15th has just nudged ahead a bit with the opening of Le Casse-Noix (The Nutcracker). Located on the border between the 7th and 15th arrondissements, chef Pierre-Olivier Lenormand has created an exceptionally pleasant restaurant in an old atelier space that he’s decorated with flea-market finds meant to evoke an eternal Gaul of thrift, wit, bonhommie and gastronomie.

Stopping by for dinner the other night with Bruno, Carole and Laurent, I instantly liked this warm pretty dining room and the friendly welcome we received, and also appreciate their really intelligent selection of wines by the glass, including the excellent white Menetou-Salon (a theme in my life this week) that I had as an aperitif. Unfortunately we arrived too late to get at the scallops that featured on the menu as both a starter and a main course, but the 32 Euro menu offered a lot of other excellent choices, including the delicious marinated salmon–big firm flavorful chunks of the fish prepared gravlax style and served with a nice salad of shaved fennel bulb and herbs, that we all pounced on as our first course.

Main courses were delicious, too. Joue de boeuf was prepared pot au feu style, and came as tender chunks of beef with a side casserole of delicious bouillon, poached winter vegetables, mustard and cornichons, a seasonal dish par excellence, while yellow pollack arrived as two generously served pieces of fish cooked in salted butter with a side of pleurottes mushrooms. A very good trio of cheeses with a side salad and an excellent ile flottante ended this fine feast at a restaurant that I’d recommend with no reservations.

56 rue de la Fédération, 15th, Tel. 01-45-66-09-01. Metro: Bir Hakeim. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Prix-fixe 32 Euros.

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Thoughts on Asian Eating in Paris

Freshly back in Paris after a trip that involved two stopovers in Singapore, I was stung by two truly miserable Asian meals this week. Dinner at Le Santal, a long-running Vietnamese place that wouldn’t be in business anymore were it not for the fact that it’s just across the street from the Opera Garnier, was flagrantly over-priced and dispiritingly mediocre, a case-book study in how with a few exceptions Asian food in Paris has remained stuck in a timid and dispiriting post-colonial time warp. The other big let-down was at Lao Tseu, a stylish Chinese hole-in-the-wall in Saint-Germain-des-Pres where I’ve been a regular customer for at least fifteen years (I used to live just a few blocks away in the rue du Bac). Both meals involved gummy flavorless starters–flabby Nem at the former, non-descript Shanghai style dumplings at the later, and main courses at both that ran to a slick of dreary vegetables with shrimp or chicken in corn-starch sauce with almost no flavor whatsoever.

Lacking in sincerity, pride and authenticity, these meals are unfortunately much too typical of the Asian offer in Paris, with the notable exception of some very good Japanese tables. Thinking back on the brilliant meal that I had at Billy Kwong, chef Kylie Kwong’s restaurant in the Surry Hills neighborhood of Sydney–I’m still dreaming about her “Homestyle Fried Biodynamic Eggs with Organic Tamari & Homemade XO” and homemade rice noodles with baby clams in chili-soy sauce, both terrific, as was everything else I ate there that night, I don’t understand why Paris has to settle for such mediocrity.

Why, I wonder, is the usual Asian offering in Paris so lackluster and dumbed down I think we have to be more demanding, and one of my hopes for 2011 is that a couple of clever local restauranteurs will re-boot Paris’s Asian offerings so that the city begins to approach the leagues of San Francisco, Sydney and London for anyone who seriously loves Asian cooking in all of its multifarious splendor.

The post LE BAR A HUITRES: Neptune’s Bounty, B+; LE CASSE-NOIX: Good Modern Bistro Cooking, B; The Sorry State of Asian Cooking in Paris appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

It took Bruno and I a longtime to find it–it’s way out on the very edges of Paris between the Porte de Versailles and the Porte de Vanves, but the moment we arrived, I knew we were in the right place. I hadn’t even hung my jacket over the back of my bentwood chair when a saucer of finely sliced sausage arrived at the table, and it was delicious with a modestly priced glass of white Cotes du Gascogne. I’ve had this place on a Post-It note stuck to my computer for ages, but what finally propelled me to go was a rave review by Francois Simon, the estimable food critic of Le Figaro, one of the major French dailies. I’ve worked with Francois several times–I suggested that he write the endpaper for a GOURMET special edition of Paris–it seemed too colonial for us to do an entire edition with only American writers and not a single French voice, and then translated it into English as gently as I could, since he has a wonderfully idiosyncratic style, and we’ve also collaborated as editors on Zagat’s Paris Guide. Through this work, and having read him for years, I know that we share not only almost identical food but restaurant tastes, and so his enthusiasm goaded me on to this remote bistro.

Even before the chalkboard menu arrived, I suspected we’d eat well, since on a Saturday night, the snug dining room with a broken tile floor, bare wood tables, Bordeaux painted trim and a zinc-clad service bar was occupied almost entirely by folks from the ‘hood, or a quiet, residential corner of the quiet, residential 15th arrondissement. Then the chalkboard came, and we ordered salmon prepared like herring (translation) and cucumbers with crab to start, and roast shoulder of lamb and hachis parmentier made with confit de canard (duck preserved in its own fat). The starters arrived with lightning speed in little verrines, or squat mason jars, and were delicious, if rather modest, when eaten with some of the best bread I’ve had in Paris for ages. If these dainty first courses were appealing, however, the mains were just plain brilliant. Bruno’s shoulder of lamb was impeccably cooked, crusty on the outside and rare in the middle, and came with quartered sauteed baby potatoes, while my hachis Parmentier, a French take on shepherd’s pie, was an unctuous preparation of shredded duck in jus de truffe covered with mashed potato and served with an excellent little mesclun salad.

With a 22 Euro “wine of the month” bottle of very good Coteaux du Tricastin, from the Enclave des Papes in the Vaucluse, I was in heaven. Bruno skipped dessert, but since I never have anything sweet to eat at home, I went with the plum tart, which was fabulous–caramelized fresh plums with dollop of caramel cream on a disk of excellent homemade pastry. Even the coffee–almost invariably the weakest link in a bistro meal in Paris, was good, and we celebrated this great find with a shared glass of Vieille Prune from Souillac in the Lot. It’s really been an age since I’ve had such a good bistro meal in Paris, and this for 32 Euros for three courses, and despite the fact that it’s a pain in the neck to get here, I’m already looking forward to my next meal at a restaurant where I intend to become a very happy regular. Now if only the service was a bit less mannered and a little warmer, this place would be truly perfect.

Restaurant du Marche, 59 rue de Dantzig, 15th, Tel. 01-48-28-31-55. Metro: Porte de Versailles or Porte de Vanves. Closed Sunday and Monday. Prix-fixe menus, lunch 18 Euros; dinner 26 Euros, 32 Euros.

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Studying the 28 Euro lunch menu, I dipped a soggy cucumber stick in a little pot of herbed creme fraiche, and quietly noted that it had no taste at all, a warning signal as it turned out, since the meal that followed was dishearteningly mediocre at best. I started with a dish that could have been wonderful–pot au feu vegetables with a coddled egg and a sharp mustard sauce, while the others went with gaspacho they judged disappointing, and marinated herring, which I found well cooked but underseasoned. Meanwhile, if the accompanying egg was perfectly cooked runny, my vegetables had almost no taste whatsoever. Next up, steamed salmon (bland), chicken (dry), and, for two of us, boeuf bourguignon, a dish I crave whatever the weather.

At its best, this brilliant standard bearer of French cooking is tender, redolent of wine and completely irresistible. Here, the sauce was decent but the beef was stringy and dried out, almost as though it had been cooked independently of the sauce, which even made me wonder if a) it hadn’t been assembled at the last minute, and b) if the sauce had been made on the premises.

I finished this lackluster meal with some Ossau-Iraty with black cherry jam, and had to send it back immediately, since the salad was a little clump of wilted, partially rotten leaves. When the plate returned, I ignored the new salad in favor of the cheese and found it completely tasteless. The others enjoyed their chocolate mousse, which was very good, but none of us would return to this restaurant before the kitchen starts to make a real effort in terms of the quality of both its produce and its cooking.

La Gauloise, 59 Avenue de la Motte-Picquet, 15th, Tel. 08-99-69-81-79. Metro: La Motte Picquet Grenelle. Lunch menus 22 and 28 Euros, Avg a la carte 45 Euros. Open daily.

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Yesterday, it was with a mixture of excitement and apprehension that I met friends at the newly opened and much anticipated Spring, chef Daniel Rose’s superb looking restaurant in the rue Bailleul. I’ve missed Rose’s cooking ever since he closed his little place in the rue de la Tour d’Auvergne near me in the 9th arrondissement, and have been following the birth of the new place with keen interest.

In the Metro on the way to lunch, however, I couldn’t help but hoping that the food would be as good, or even better, than I remembered it. Well, let me stop right here and say that you should pick up the phone and book here immediately: Spring, 6 rue Bailleul, 1st, (33) 1-45-96-05-72. springparis.blogspot.com. This place is going to be taken by storm and one of the best things about lunch yesterday was that I was able to make a dinner reservation in person for next week, which is when I’ll do a proper review.

Our lunch as privileged guinea pigs was sensational. Rose plans to build his lunch menu around bouillon with different garnishes (pigeon, grilled chicken, baby vegetables from Joel Thiebault), which you can then expand with a variety of small plates according to your appetite. As he explains, the bouillon is meant to be “restaurant,” or restorative, and also channel the fact that the original restaurants in Paris specialized in bouillon.

We started with melon with garlicky lomito (cured pork loin) and lime zest, a perfect summer palate teaser, and then ate smoked eel with gently pickled baby eggplant, flash grilled shrimp on a bed of baby fennel salad, trout with avocado slices and coriander flowers, and then the best bouillon I’ve ever had in my life–deep, ruddy, potent and profoundly soothing, with grilled chicken and tiny vegetables. Desserts were superb, too, including a brilliant preparation of raspberries in a light cool syrup of lemon verbena and white peaches, black cherries with fresh almonds (sublime combination), and a deconstructed lemon tart with chocolate shortbread crumbs. All told, it was damned good meal in a stunningly attractive space, and most of all, it was really fun, with a great soft soul soundtrack in the background, terrific wines–an Alsatian pinot noir (I was dubious about this one, but it was terrific) and an Austrian Gruner Vertliner, and the pleasure of watching the kitchen team work in their brand new open stainless steel kitchen.

A few weeks ago, Rose told me that he wanted to reboot Paris restaurants for the 21st century. Well, he has, and I can’t wait for dinner next Saturday night.

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I liked it when it opened two years ago, ate there several times, and then it sort of slipped by me. My friend told me that they’d just reopened after a fire, though, so this seemed a good occasion to see how talented chef Karil Lopez’s cooking had evolved in the meantime. Lopez trained with Eric Frechon at the Bristol hotel before he went out on his own, and my abiding memory of his food was that it was unusually sincere, delicate and almost maternal, or quite unusual for a male chef.

Though it was a rather long Metro ride from my digs in the 9th arrondissement, it was nice to come above ground on the rue du Commerce in the 15th arrondissement–it’s one of the sweetest streets in Paris and has a real village feel, being friendly, convivial and peaceable. The only real danger in this neighborhood, in fact, is that you might be hit in the head by an expired geranium flower, since several people were busily dead-heading their window boxes as I walked down the street. The last time I’d been out here, I had an excellent meal at the Cafe du Commerce, which serves great steaks and really good frites, and heading to Le Cristal de Sel, the memory of this feed meant that I arrived with a really good appetite, too.

Arriving, the restaurant looked terrific, with bamboo floors, generously spaced zinc topped tables with comfortable wooden chairs, good lighting, and votive candles burning inside niches gouged into pink blocks of cristal de sel, or salt cristal, probably from Tunisia.

Le Cristal de Sel  Over glasses of a Jean-Luc Colombo Viognier so good we decided to drink a bottle with dinner, we studied the chalkboard menu, which was helpfully explained by Damien, the charming maitre d’hotel here. Lots of things looked good, but I started with shrimp wrapped in crisp phyllo pastry and served with a delicious Tandoori spiced mayonnaise and a lively little salad of fresh herbs and Madame C went for the crab lasagna, which had also tempted me and was terrific–perfectly dressed crabmeat with fava beans and fine matchsticks of Granny Smith apple that shot the dish through with a pleasant tanginess. Next, langoustine filled ravioli in a foamy nage on a bed of buttered cabbage for me–a dish that’s at once comforting and quietly luxurious, and perfectly cooked gray mullet in a brilliant sauce of rosemary honey with green asparagus tips and squid rings for Madame C.

Both of these main courses were not only delicious, but served as a perfect foil to our chatter about living in New York City in the early 1980s when the subway cars were still covered with graffiti and both of us were completely broke. C worked for a famous fashion designer with an insatiable appetite for both cocaine and Latin men, and I toiled in a niche on East 50th Street as the editorial assistant to Random House editor Joe Fox, one of the most brilliant and charming men I’ve ever met. Joe used to refer to the letters I typed for him as my “canvasses” because they were often so thick with White-Out, the correction fluid used for typing mistakes, of which I made many and also generously gave me the review copies of every book the company published, a privilege of being an editor. I’d like to think that it never occurred to him that I’d run them downtown to the Strand bookstore for weekend money, or at least until the shock horror day when I showed up with a big bag of books to sell and found myself standing in front of his son, who’d just gotten a job there. “Oh, Hi Alec–Books to sell#8221; he said, and I fled. In any event, shared memories of how we’d both once subsisted on Progesso brand canned lentil soup only served to make this excellent dinner taste even better.

C finished up with fromage blanc from Bordier in Saint Malo, which came with a choice of homemade jams–Lopez loves making jam, and I had a nice aumoniere (fancy name for a crepe folded like a purse) filled with apples that had been cooked in salted caramel, a wonderful dessert. All told, a very good meal, and I hope I’ll be able to get back to this charming restaurant again sometime soon.

Le Cristal de Sel, 13 rue Mademoiselle, 15th, Tel. 01-42-50-35-29. Metro: Commerce. Lunch formulas 15 and 18 Euros, a la carte 40 Euros.

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I love summertime in Paris, and one of the things I like best about it is the full-barrel enthusiasm with which Parisians take to dining outdoors whenever they can. Paris does outdoor dining than any of the other large cities that I know well–New York, Boston, London, Prague–too, because it not only has wide sidewalks but is truffled with secret gardens and courtyards.

One of the prettiest ones is the interior courtyard of the Hotel Plaza Athenee, a charming aerie with marble floors and ivy colored walls punctuated with tomato red window awnings where a surprising number of birds (tape?) provide a chirpy aural backdrop.

La Cour Jardin at the Hotel Plaza Athenee  

During the summer, a seasonal restaurant called La Cour Jardin sets up shop here, and on a warm night, it’s a very pleasant if predictably pricey place to dine. Working with executive chef Alain Ducasse, La Cour Jardin’s chef Sylvain Fouilleul does an appealing Mediterranean themed menu of the sort of simple summery dishes that make for great warm weather dining.

Stopping by for dinner the other night, I loved my terrine of heirloom tomatoes with fresh basil and a delicious cartridge of Rove (a fresh goat cheese that’s produced just outside of Marseilles), and my glamorous friend enjoyed her lobster salad, too. The latter was composed of perfectly poached medallions of lobster and a huge thatch of herbs and greens that were intriguingly garnished with oven-dried lobster roe, but which might otherwise have benefited from slightly more assertive seasoning.

Our main courses were excellent, though, including goujonettes (strips) of John Dory with delicious stuffed baby vegetables for me and baby sole meuniere for my friend. We shared a curious declension of raspberries for dessert–raspberry compote, a raspberry glazed beignet, and a raspberry milk shake for dessert, and thoroughly enjoyed both an excellent bottle of William Lefevre Grand Cru Chablis Les Preuses and the cheerful, eager young service here.

As I mentioned, this place is expensive, but as habitually frugal as I usually am, I have to admit that a little extravagance is occasionally bracing.

La Cour Jardin, Hotel Plaza Athenee, 25 avenue Montaigne, 8th, Tel. 01-53-67-66-65. Metro: Alma-Marceau. Average 100 Euros.

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My first gastronomic experience of this famously epicurean place occurred just a few months after I’d moved to France, when a friend and I decided to cast off the gloom of an endlessly rainy winter and treat ourselves to a day trip culminating in a really good lunch. And what a lunch it was! Chef Gerard Boyer, who had three stars at the time, engraved his name on the living pith of my memory with a (widely copied) artichoke cappuccino with black truffles, the best smoked salmon I’ve ever had, and a veal chop with a satiny citrus sabayon and a garnish of baby onions and wild mushrooms.

When Boyer left, he was replaced by the amiable young Didier Elena, who came fresh from a stint as head chef at Alain Ducasse’s lukewarmly received restaurant in New York. I ate here several times when Elena was in the saddle, and if the food was always very good, I often found it a little gimmicky and trying too hard, especially when any chef at the most prestigious hotel in Reims should have the modesty, faux or otherwise, to offer menus that serve as perfect screens against which to discover the glory of Champagne as a table wine (as opposed to its most common casting as an aperitif or a party tipple). During the Elena era, I also found the dining room at Les Crayeres had become a bit stuffy around the edges–when people feel that it’s incumbent upon them to whisper at the table, something’s clearly gone wrong.

With all of this history, and a great affection for Les Crayeres, I was very keen when I went to sample newly appointed chef Philippe Mille’s menu for lunch this past week (as most people know, Reims is now just a hop, skip and a jump from Paris since the new TGV train line opened). Arriving, we met Herve Fort, a charming Auvergnat who has just become the property’s new general manager, and I understood why I had immediately detected a change in the ambience of the hotel–Fort, a passionate foodlover, wants to make Les Crayeres “the best resort in France, a place known for its conviviality and its generosity.” Suffice it to say that he’s well out the gate.

Then we were seated, and while sipping a superb J.L. Vergnon Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru Extra Brut, everyone decided they wanted to drink Champagne all through the meal, always a brilliant way of discovering the extraordinary complexity of this wine. Our “Menu Gourmande” opened with an hors d’oeuvre that sent a very clear signal about Philippe Mille’s style and intentions, a soft aspic-like soup of cubed boiled beef and carrots and parsnips and two superb garnishes, horseradish spiked whipped cream, and a crispy little beignet filled with chopped cornichons (pickles) and capers. Earthy but sophisticated, and displaying a technical excellence that was engagingly blunted by a bit of gastronomic wit (the garnishes), this dish instantly told me we’d be eating well.

Mille had most recently been second to Yannick Alleno at Le Meurice in Paris, and before that had worked with Frederic Anton at the Pre Catelan and Michel Roth at Lasserre and L’Espadon at the Hotel Ritz), so I was very curious to see if this excellent opening salvo of a culinary calling card played out. And mostly it did. I’m not a fan of King Crab legs–I’d rather eat langoustines, but as the first course in our menu, the crab was pleasantly garnished with citrus segments, a citrus vinaigrette, avocado puree and a few baby beet leaves. John Dory braised with seaweed and garnished with chopped ormeaux (conch fished off of the Channel Islands) and razor shell clams renewed the excitement of our hors d’oeuvre and then we had a sublime slow-poached Bresse chicken breast with a slightly silly decoration of pureed summer truffle ‘zebra’ stripes and a delicious garnish of pasta with black truffle shavings.

“Les Crayeres” was a terrific dessert, too, with “biscuit rose de Reims,” a sort of cross between a soft meringue and sponge cake, with grapefruit sorbet and a gelee of Champagne with citrus fruits.

All told a truly excellent meal, and if Mille has found his footing this quickly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Les Crayeres once again became one of the great restaurants of France.

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Not many people are likely to take me up on the suggestion of a trip to the rue de Dantzig at one of the farthest flung corners of the 15th arrondissement, but for anyone whose looking for a solidly good bargain feed in a very pleasant setting and doesn’t mind a long Metro ride, La Cantine des Tontons is a great address. To be sure, the concept of a serve-yourself buffet in cozy, convivial surroundings isn’t exactly new–La Cave de L’Os a Moelle and several other restaurants pioneered this very good idea a longtime ago, but this place is very pretty (owner Jean-Guillaume Dufour loves to scour flea markets in search of objects that will elicit a poignantly nostalgic reaction in French eyes) and the quality of the very French food and wine is very honest.

I loved the terrine de campagne and the hot vegetable soup on the first-courses sideboard, and a jarret de veau (veal shank) braised with shallots was enormous, tender and full of flavor. Desserts could be better, but the cheeses were good and there’s a terrific selection of very fairly priced wines like the 22 Euro Morgon we drank at dinner the other night.

Part of the fun of this place is that you sit at table d’hotes, and so we ended up chatting with a very friendly shoe-importer and his wife who had just come back from a cruise to Libya, a place I’ve always wanted to go. They had a fascinating trip, they said, but the supremely French grub served at La Cantine des Tontons was driving them to near bliss after ten days in a country they described as “pas de tout gourmand.”

Les Crayeres, Boulevard Henry Vasnier, Reims, Tel. 03-26-24-90-00. Average 150 Euros, Prix-fixe 110 Euros, Lunch menu 65 Euros and 85 Euros. Closed Monday-Tuesday.

La Cantine des Tontons, 36 rue de Dantzig, 15th, Tel. 01 48 28 23 66. Metro: Porte de Versailles. Prix-fixe three-course menu 21 Euros. Closed on Sunday.

The post Les Crayeres, Reims: A-; La Cantine des Tontons, Paris: B appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

At the risk of a little sacrilege, I’d say that a really well-made pizza can offer a punch of pleasure that’s every bit as potent as a slab of foie gras or any other Gallic delicacy, and anyone who doubts me, should make a beeline to Keste on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. On an absolutely arctic afternoon before Bruno and I found the courage to try and jam everything we’d bought or been given during our visits to New York and the Bahamas into two suitcase that seemed to shrink by the hour, we dashed out the door for a last-minute pizza fix before the numbing misery of JFK.

With a pleasant young Italian waiter tediously playing the folklore card by calling us “Signore” (Gentlemen)–and this inspite of the fact that he perfectly understood me explaining in French what Buratta was to Bruno, things did not get off to an auspicious start. The shockingly high prices on the menu had me ready to pick a fight, too.

And then the pizzas arrived, and were truly fabulous. In fact, the creamy sweetness of fresh just melted mozarella meeting with the bright acidic tang of San Marzano tomatoes with a punchy floral note of basil has to be one of the most brilliant taste trinities ever invented. A sausage version of the same pizza came with a superb garnish of crumbled pork sausage meat from Faicco’s butcher across the street, and though $8 for a glass of wine still feels like highway robbery to me, the house red went down without any problems. The only tiny flaw with Keste’s pizzas was that a perhaps insufficiently heated oven made them a mite soggy–in Naples, the crust of any good pizza is always dry on the bottom, but this is just a quibble, and I was well and truly yearning for another pizza few hours later when I pried open the aluminum lid on one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten on AIR FRANCE.

Keste’s also provides an inadvertent but absolutely fascinating lesson in the essential differences between American and European dining, since our waiter spent at least half of his time telling customers that they couldn’t order a half-and-half pizza (half mushroom and half sausage, say) like you can in most American pizzerias. “Why not I’m the one whose going to be eating it and paying for it#8221; said a man at the table next to ours. “Er, well, because the chef thinks that only certain flavors work well together. This is why there is no compose-it-yourself pizza here.” Or to wit, raised to believe the customer is king, many Americans resent it when gastronomic discipline is imposed by a restaurant kitchen.

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Before leaving Paris, I’d booked dinner at Le Concert de Cuisine for our first night home. Why I’d heard it was wonderful just before I went away for the holidays, and the lightness and subtlety of Franco-Japanese cooking seemed ideal as the gastronomic balm to jet lag and the inevitable masochistical melancholia that follows the end of any good vacation. Suffice it to say that I made an excellent choice, too, since chef Naoto Masumoto served us one of the best meals I’ve eaten in Paris since, well, my last dinner at the Cafe des Musees (early December).

To be sure, the location in the 15th arrondissement wasn’t particularly alluring, and the pleasant but anodyne decor of the dining room isn’t memorable, but I’ve rarely eaten food as delicate but politely provocative in the genre of the culinary minuette created by Japan and France’s reciprocal gastronomic fascination than Masumoto’s pumpkin risotto, linguine with sardines and Nori seaweed (sublime), lacquered suckling pig, and baba au umeshu (plum liqueur).  Shrimp flambeed in soy sauce and Cognac were superb, too, and overall Masumoto, who previously cooked at the Benkay at the Hotel Nikko for ten years, has revealed himself as a major talent for so brilliantly understanding the best ways for French and Japanese cooking to inflect upon each other.

Keste Pizza & Vino, 271 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10014, Tel. 1-212-243-1500. Avg $25.

Le Concert de Cuisine, 14 rue Nelaton, 15th, Tel. 01-40-58-10-15. Metro: Bir-Hakeim. Lunch menus 24 et 29€, Dinner menus 40 et 57€.

The post Keste–Brilliant Pizza in New York City, and Le Concert de Cuisine–Superbly Subtle Franco-Japanese Cooking in the 15th: A-/B+ appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.