Ever since I’ve had teeth, few foods have more reliably made me happy than pizza, and this is why the pizza at pizzaïoulo Giuseppe Cutraro new Peppe Pizzeria in the 20th Arrondissement not far from the Père Lachaise Cemetery made me ecstatic last weekend. With my appetite honed by the recent weeks of being locked up in my Paris flat, I was yearning for some really really really good pizza, because most of what was available through Paris food-delivery apps was pretty mediocre. And the inexplicable international popularity of several huge American pizza chains notwithstanding, there are few things sadder than mediocre pizza.

When I think about it, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like pizza, because not liking pizza would be as life-threatening and pleasure-killing as saying you didn’t like flowers or kisses. But as a native of southwestern Connecticut, the original home of great pizza in the United States (I expect some cat calls and blow back for this assertion, but it’s true), I’m grew up as a pizza connoisseur, and that was long before I finally made it to Naples and had a first head-spinning experience of the real McCoy, the sultry and stunningly delicious Margherita–just dough topped with crushed tomatoes, mozzarella di buffalo, and a fresh basil leaf of two before a turn in the blister-inducing inferno of a Napolitan beehive pizza oven.

I’d been reading about this place in just before le confinement (quarantine) shut down almost every restaurant in Paris, and I’d decided I’d be willing to travel halfway across Paris to taste the pizza that had won Giuseppe Cutraro, aka Peppe, the “World Champion of Contemporary Napolitan Pizza 2019-2020.” (“The Art of the Napolitan Pizzaïoulo” has figured on UNESCO’s World Heritage list since 2017). To be perfectly honest, it sounded, well, strange. To wit, this pie was sauced with yellow Sicilian tomatoes, topped with mozarella di buffala and provolone, Tuscan ham aged for 36 months, almond slivers and fig jam. But before you conclude that I’m a hidebound purist, I’d quickly tell you that one of my all-time pizzas was and is the one served at Frank Pepe Pizzeria in New Haven, Connecticut, which is topped with little-neck clams from Rhode Island and is just stunningly good.

So “Hawaian  pizza” topped with ham and pineapple and pizzas topped with salad, any kind of salad–absolutely not, but if you respect the pizza as a sort of brilliant blank canvas awaiting the humble new gustatory brush strokes of a real artist, sometimes pizza innovation works out spectacularly well. Like Frank Pepe’s clam pizzas or Giuseppe Cutraro astonishing delicious ‘World Champion Pizza.” The reason this pizza is so good is the same reason that any dish anywhere in the world succeeds, which is that it offers such an exquisitely subtle but still legible compilation of tastes that unite in perfect harmony. The almonds Texture. The yellow tomato sauce Low-acidity to balance the sweetness of the sparingly applied fig jam. The two cheeses Different textures and salinities. Try it, you’ll like it is all I can say.

The other thing that makes Peppe Pizzeria’s pizzas so good is that they allow the dough, which is made from flour imported from Naples, to ferment before kneading it and slapping it around, so that the rolled crust is filled with air pockets and the base is exceptionally light and thin.

Peppe did a stint at Keste on Bleecker Street in New York City’s West Village and also worked in Switzerland before he came to Paris to work as a pizza-maker for the Big Mamma Group in Paris, which has seven Italian restaurants in the capital, one each in Lille and Lyon, and two in London. Peppe wanted his own place, though, so he opened at the end of January, and the restaurant had been packed at lunch and dinner until the lockdown came in mid-March.

Fortunately, however, it was easy to continue working on a takeout basis, so the place has thrived even during the challenging last few months. When we arrived to collect our two pizzas, an order of carpaccio with arugula and a tiramisu the other night there was a huge line of people waiting to collect their pizzas. So we bought two deliciously yeasty Napolitan beers and enjoyed the fresh air of a mild May evening until our order came up and we bolted back across Paris to tuck into our pizzas.

Ever since I ate the lone remaining slice of our Margherita for breakfast the following morning, I have been permanently craving this pizza and ruing the fact that Peppe Pizzeria doesn’t deliver. One way or another, I’ll be back again soon, and maybe next time I’ll try the truffle pizza, which is topped with “truffle cream” (hmmm….), sautéed mushrooms, fresh stracciatella from Puglia, crushed hazelnuts and freshly shaved Italian truffle. The ‘Piccante”–tomatoes from Puglia, mozzarella di buffalo di Campania, Calabrian spianata (spicy salami), pickled onion and shavings of Pecorino Romano DOP speaks to me, too. And a friend who lived nearby says that the gnocchi alla Sorrentina are outstanding, too.

I look forward to the day that we can dine in Peppe Pizzeria’s spacious dining room, too, but in the meantime, the friendly crew behind the tiled open kitchen should get used to seeing my pizza-loving face.

Peppe Pizzeria, 2 Place Saint-Blaise, 20th Arrondissement, Tel. 01-45-35-59-13. Metro: Gambetta or Porte de Bagnolet. Open Tues-Sun for lunch and dinner. Closed Monday. Average 30 Euros. www.peppepizzeria.fr

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When I asked chef Kevin d’Andréa why he and business partner and fellow chef Thibault Sombardier had chosen the Belleville district of Paris as the location for their excellent new bistro Mensae, he said, “The neighborhood is really happening right now.” And for better or worse, it is. In fact this old working-class neighborhood in northeastern Paris where Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier were born is changing so quickly it’s inducing emotional and sociological vertigo in many longtime residents, like the delightful and sublimely talented chef Raquel Carena of Le Baratin, for example (for more on Mme. Carena’s feelings on the subject, see here).

City planners regularly ignore or underestimate the impact that restaurants can have on the health and evolution of an urban neighborhood. The first example that always comes to my mind is Danny Meyer‘s Union Square Cafe in New York City, since it both anticipated and accelerated the gentrification of a rundown, crime-ridden part of Manhattan when it opened in 1985. Ironically enough, Le Chapeau Melon and Le Baratin may have both had the same seminal impact on Belleville, too. To judge from the comments some people leave about the neighborhood on TripAdvisor, Belleville still elicits a sort of ‘Lions-and-tiger-and-bears, oh no!’ reaction from the world’s well-heeled suburbanites, and the first but rarely only time these people ever set foot in the area is to eat at these restaurants. The same thing is going on in New York City’s Harlem today, too.

Even with the soft French economy, the irrevocable mill of the real-estate speculation that leads to disruptive renovation continues to churn through what remains of those districts of Paris that once housed the city’s working classes, who are now gradually being expelled to the modern suburbs on the other side of the peripherique, the beltway that constitutes the rather constricting collar of the French capital. It’s the same everywhere, too: living in the city has become a privilege. And who can blame the young bobo couples who prefer good architecture, a strong sense of place and history, urban liveliness and diversity and great food to the murky blandness of most suburbs (I speak from experience, too, since I grew up in suburban Connecticut and told my mother as a nine-year-old that I hated living in a ‘melted city,’ which is how I perceived of our suburb, and would move to New York City, where my much envied cousins lived, as soon as I could; and I did).

Et donc à table, since the Latin word for table is mensa and the one that D’Andréa and Sombardier have created is very good indeed. Arriving, it presents an unexpectedly polished, almost television-studio perfect face to the world, with a service bar of recycled wood, ecru walls, suspension lamps, plank floors, a set of copper cookware on one wall and shelves filled with appetizing jars of preserved mushrooms, fruit and vegetables. So somehow it’s not surprising that the very experienced and media savvy D’Andréa and Sombardier were both finalists on the predictably noisy and not very convincingly gastronomic French television cooking show “Top Chef.”

Happily, however, the meal we had the other night was just about as many light years from a TV dinner as you could possibly get. This kitchen is very serious about its sourcing, always a good sign, with vegetables coming from the Bretonne produce princess Annie Bertin and Joël Thiébault, Armara for fish, Hugenin and Les Boucheries Nivernaises for meat, and Lyon’s La Mère Richard for cheeses (insofar as this last supplier is concerned, I detect that quality has been slipping since the business was bought by a company in Normandy). The menu is intelligently constructed with an appealing assortment of plates to share–frogs’ legs sautéed in garlic and parsley, charcuterie from Sibilia in Lyon, and Basque style squid, then five starters, five main courses, and three desserts.

On a rainy night when I arrived at the restaurant a bit shaken after having passed an impromptu shrine of wilting flowers and votive candles in a nearby doorway–one of the victims of the recent terrorist attack on Paris lived the building–the dining room was warm and soothing when I stepped inside, and the waiter was suavely charming when he brought us menus and aperitifs of white wine. More on him later, but we were both hungry and our starters were excellent. Bruno’s pastry-enclosed terrine de gibier (game) was unctuously rich and autumnal, with a bright garnish of sweet-and-sour pickled vegetables, and my leeks with a mimosa garnish (sieved hard-cooked egg) were gently marinated and delightfully accompanied with crispy croquettes of de-boned calf’s feet.

Our main courses were excellent, too. My chicken was pleasantly crisped but still  succulent and came with an earthy mix of winter vegetables–parsnips, carrots, and chestnuts–in a creamy vin jaune seasoned sauce that would have been better if the wine had been just a little more assertive. Bruno ordered the grilled paleron, a cut of beef that comes from between the neck and shoulder blade and which is often braised to break down the muscle in the meat. Served rare, it was full of flavor and unexpectedly tender, although this perception was doubtless abetted by a pool of fluffy feather-weight white polenta.

At a time when Paris is still a little raw and on edge, it was reassuring and mood-lifting to be in a busy, happy dining room that’s clearly a new neighbourhood favorite. It’s easy to see why, too, since everything about this place is so flawlessly thought through and professional, including the cooking, but on the other hand, it’s relaxed enough so that a young couple could come through the door around 10pm, ask if they were still serving, and be cheerfully seated at the service bar, where one of the dramatic taps dispenses Gallia, a legendary local brew that was made in Paris from 1890 to 1969, and then revived again in 2009.

Since portions here are generous, we split a compression de pomme, a sort of deconstructed apple tart, for dessert,  and finished up our pleasant bottle of Fleurie, before coffee. When the waiter brought the coffee, we chatted a little bit about the restaurant, and he mentioned he’d previously worked at chef André Chiang’s brilliant Restaurant André in Singapore for two years. That’s when I recognized him, since he’d served me when I ate there last January. And I guess this little coincidence says a lot about what Belleville’s becoming these days, too. One way or another, there have never been so many good restaurants in this neighborhood, and this mensa is definitely one of them.

Mensae, 23 rue Mélingue, 19th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-53-19-80-98. Metro: Pyrénées. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch menu: 20 Euros, Dinner menu 36 Euros, average a la carte 35 Euros. www.mensae-restaurant.com  

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Marinated mackerel

Meeting a friend at Chatomat, a sweet little restaurant that opened this past summer, I found myself thinking that the Paris neighborhood where it’s located–on the border between trendy Menilmontant and earthier but increasingly gentrifying Belleville, has just the sort of rough urban charm I like. I love the almost antic mix of people from all over the world who live here and the fact that everything hasn’t been scrubbed up, municipally tidied or fast-buck renovated. For me, this is a real city neighborhood just the way I like them, but I’d have to admit that I suspect a fair number of anglophone visitors to Paris might find it just a tad too rough around the edges for their comfort zone. So there–I’ve warned you, although a warning, as such, isn’t really necessary, because this neighborhood is perfectly safe, instead it just looks, sounds, smells and feels different from such zealously overgroomed and sociologically pasteurized precincts as Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which I’d wager is just about the dullest patch in Paris these days.

Oh, and in case you were wondering about the name, which sounds like some kind of alarming seven-speed device you might find in a Tokyo sex shop, it has no meaning but rather is just the verbal whimsy of the young trio who run this place. Arriving, I liked it right away, since the old shop-front space is well-lit, well-designed–painted white, with exposed stone walls, and black suspension lamps, and has a sort of witty visual post-industrial vibe. So Dilow, my pal, and me studied the brief menu–three starters, three main courses, prepared in a small kitchen by Alice and Victor, who cooked all over the place–the Gavroche in London and Ledoyen and Arpège in Paris, as well as Scandinavia and Asia, before opening shop here. Then the waiter, a smoldering young Brazilian, came to take our order and announced, “Je suis Antonio,”which somehow resonated as, I am Mandingo. Antonio did a terrific job all night long, though, and set us up with some very good accras–salt-cod fritters, to accompany our aperitifs of Coteaux du Giennois.

Dilow’s first course of marinated mackerel predicted much of the rest of our meal, too–sweet and pleasant, but too timid. The kitchen here works with good produce, and the chopped dill, an herb rarely ever seen in France, tipped a card to the Nordic Lights that obviously inspired this dish, which was garnished with radishes and cucumbers and a green sauce that was pretty but had almost zero taste. Still, it had that angelic quality that distinguishes the best new Nordic cooking, or a sort of chick pecking its way out of the shell innocence that’s hard to resist. I liked my starter much better–a thick slice of roasted celery bulb in an excellent Parmesan foam with shavings of the same cheese. This needed a bit of salt and pepper and maybe a few matchsticks of chorizo to wake it up, but it was delicious.

Baked celery bulb in Parmesan cream

If both of us basically liked our first courses, this sense of well-being was amplified by the pleasure of being in a young restaurant that’s clearly succeeding–you could tell that the crowd here had come from all over Paris, not just the neighborhood, and I don’t doubt it’ll become international soon, too. Next, Dilow had a steak, which was good beef nicely cooked and garnished with a few baby potatoes, a sprinkling of various salad leaves and another sauce that had almost no taste, and I did much better with my perfectly cooked cod, accompanied by grilled baby romaine, a scattering of little black olives, a mound of slightly overcooked red quinoa and an anonymous sauce. Aside from the excellent quality of the fish, what gave this dish a voice was a few sprinkles of dried black olive crumbs. Good as the cooking here may be, it’s not at the level of what Bertrand Grébault is doing at Septime, because it lacks his authority and sophistication.

Cod with grilled romaine, black olives and red quinoa  I’d liked to have concluded this meal with some cheese, because we were finishing up a very good bottle of Chinon, but as there was none, we split a forgettable chocolate dessert. All told, for a newborn, Chatomat is good, and as the cooks in the kitchen come up to speed and find the confidence to dare more authoritative and inventive seasoning, it’ll surely become even better. One way or another, it’s a fun night out for students of new restaurants and lesser-known corners of Paris.

6 rue Victor Letalle, 20th, Tel. 01-47-97-25-77. Metro: Ménilmontant. Open for dinner from Wednesday through Sunday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Lunch service likely to start soon. Average 40 Euros.

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If you work at home like I do, going downstairs to get the mail is a highlight of the day–what welcome distractions from my keyboard will I find when I open the mailbox Yesterday there was a bubble-wrap mailer from W.H. Norton in New York, and I ripped the package open in the cobbled hallway of my building in eagerness to see what it contained.

It was a thrill to find a copy of my friend Adam Ried’s beautiful new book “Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes” enclosed. Adam, whom I met when he and his partner moved to Paris for a year, is one of the most naturally talented cooks I know, so I couldn’t wait to get upstairs and dive into his new pages. Right off the bat, this beautifully produced book–lovely photographs, good paper, excellent editing, all a real rarity in the modern world of publishing, was a charmer. He’d told me about the book when I saw him in Cambridge, Mass. where he lives last winter, and having had the pleasure of many meals cooked by Adam, a former editor at Cook’s Illustrated and presently the cooking columnist for the Boston Globe and kitchen-equipment specialist on PBS’s popular “America’s Test Kitchen,” I was certain it would be a lot of fun.

And so it was, with the head notes, or the introductions to each recipe, being so much fun to read that I immediately sent an email about a generalized power failure in my Paris neighborhood to the poor woebegone editor who was awaiting an overdue story from me, and cozied up in the kitchen, my favorite place to read, with his book. Talk about good timing–in the midst of this ambient gloom, when everyone I know is counting centimes and hopefully hunting down life’s simpler pleasures, a milkshake cookbook is a real bull’s eye.

If I still think fondly of the banana-vanilla-ice-cream-and-maple-syrup milkshakes Mom made with our noisy but indestructible Waring blender as an after school treat, Adam showed me that the genre offers vastly larger and more intriguing possibilities, including a vanilla, rum and grilled cashew shake, a maple-bacon shake (two of my favorites flavors in one fell swoop), and a triple peach and buttermilk shake. Suffice it to say that my Kitchenaid blender got a real workout last weekend, and that the maple-bacon shake has become my all-time favorite.

This charming book is ideal for families, the newly divorced, singles of all ages, and as a house present for anyone you might be visiting this summer. As Adam says, “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

———

So finally the weather in Paris broke, and I was suddenly hungry for a real feed but not in the mood to prepare any meal more complicated than a plate of the sublime Corsican charcuterie I’d brought back from a recent trip and a tomato-mozarella-basil salad with one of my new favorite olive oils–Christian Mons Catoni’s “Fruite Noir,” which is made from lightly fermented black Corsican olives. What I really wanted was to sink my teeth into a good steak, and when Bruno got home from work, we compared our respective desires (happily, they were in synch) and set out for Au Boeuf Couronne in the distant 19th arrondissement.

I had been here since a long ago dinner during which actress Leslie Caron spent the whole evening attacking a tete de veau with a mallet, a process she did with her usual elegance, although both Judy and I ended up being spattered with various bits of calf’s head, but a friend who just moved into this neighborhood–La Villette, or the district where Paris’s slaughterhouses were once located, recently raved about a steak feast she’d had there. So we put the top down on Bruno’s little black convertible and set off through a mostly empty city that seemed to be regularly punctuated with billboard’s advertising a new halal chicken loaf.

The restaurant hadn’t changed a wit since I was last there, nor, thank goodness, had the menu. Deciding to defy the cholesterol odds for a change, I ordered a frisee salad with a poached egg and lardons and a filet, while Bruno went with the marrow bones (which looked like they’d come from a dinousaur) and a faux filet. I was rather let down that they weren’t doing their sublime pommes soufflées, or potato slices fried so that they puff up, but the pommes dauphine the waiter proposed in their stead were worth the trip across town. These perfectly deep fried golden nuggets of choux pastry mixed with mashed potatoes had a slight whiff of nutmet and were absolutely heavenly with one of the best pieces of meat I’ve eaten in a very longtime. The frisee salad wasn’t cooked to order–the lardons were cold, as was the egg, and a squiggle of reduced raspberry vinegar had no business being on the plate whatsoever, but our main courses were a triumph, the waiter was charming, and it was a real pleasure to be in an old-fashioned Paris restaurant that didn’t reek of marketing.

Open seven days a week all year long, this delightful place really is worth the cab fare for diehard carnivores.

Au Boeuf Couronne, 188 avenue Jean-Jaures, 19th, Tel. 01-42-39-44-44. Metro: Porte de Pantin. Average 45 Euros.

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