@Marie Genin

The Bistro Paradis, a winsome new restaurant on the street of the same name, adds some delicious momentum to the ongoing transformation of a formerly fusty part of the 10^th Arrondissement into a lively new restaurant district with a lot of adventurous and innovative young chefs. Talented Brazilian born chef Alexander Furtado’s delicious and quietly original riff on the cannon of modern French bistro cuisine also demonstrates how alluringly cosmopolitan this cooking has become in Paris at the beginning of the 21^st century. Previously reluctant or resistant when it came to foreign seasonings and ingredients, Parisians have recently embraced them with such wholehearted curiosity that the French capital is quietly becoming almost as wordly at the table as larger cities like New York and London.

Tartare of bass and salmon with lemongrass, ginger and combava @Anabelle Schachmes

“I use typically Brazilian produce like coconut milk and shavings of toasted coconut, guava, mango, acai and pecqui in dishes that are cooked according to the classical French techniques I learned while working at Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the Hotel Dorchester in London and then at  Christian Constant’s restaurants in Paris,” explains the very friendly Furtado. “Contrary to what many people think, Brazilian cooking is characterized by subtle melded flavors, and it’s not hot, which makes it appealing to the French,” says the chef.

What he’s referring to is a flavor palette that might be described as a spectrum of tropical umami, or sweet savoury often nutty flavors which evoke someplace much sunnier than the rue de Paradis, despite a name that would seem to promise an eternity of pleasure. What’s fascinating about Furtado’s cooking is how easily and alluringly the idiom contemporary French bistro cooking embraces his well-groomed expression of childhood taste memories in a huge, distant and famously sensual homeland, Brazil.

@Annabelle Schachmes

In their own way, Furtado and his delightful partner Yoann Dinh are actually perpetuating the traditional vocation of this part of Paris in a different way. For most of the 19^th century the fetchingly named rue de Paradis was the honeypot destination where bourgeois mothers and their engaged daughters came to shop for the furnishings that presaged, it was to be fervently hoped, a prosperous life of domestic bliss to come.

Due to its proximity to the Gare de l’Est, the gateway to Paris for trains arriving from eastern France where the best French crystal (Baccarat, Saint Louis) and glassware have historically been produced, the rue de Paradis attracted producer showrooms, and these were eventually joined by shops selling porcelain, silverware and almost everything needed to set an impressively respectable table except for the fresh flowers and the fruit and sweetmeats carefully chosen to ornament the epergne in the center of the table.

During the seventies and eighties, the decline of life-styles that regularly required fish fork and knives, much less silver-plated asparagus clamps or at least three different crystal glasses for each place setting–water, white wine and red, dimmed the glamour once reflected upon the neighborhood by the carriage trade, and by the nineties, the quartier had become filled with African hair-dressing salons, Bosnian butchers, and the kebab stands that are the telltale sign of almost any ‘transitional’ neighborhood in Paris. Now, though, the rue de Paradis is peddling good taste again, but in different declensions, including the handsome interior of bleached oak paneling designed by Kristin Gavoille, an architect who formerly worked with Philipe Starck, that has transformed the narrow premises of a former cafe du quartier into a stylish little room with a lot of personality (it’s efficient, too, since there’s a dumb-waiter at the service bar in the middle of the room that sends dirty dishes down to the scullery below–“This was a challenging space to make into a restaurant,” says Yoann Dinh by way of explanation with a grin).

Meeting Grant, an adored but rarely seen Scottish friend who lived in Paris for fifteen years before he inherited a cottage and pub on a remote island and decided to take a crack at a new life, for dinner, I arrived early and enjoyed a glass of white wine and studying the menu for a few minutes by myself. Just as I found myself vaguely wondering if Grant wouldn’t show up wearing a kilt, someone said, “Hey, how are ya, then, ya old cod!#8221;

@Annabelle Schachmes

Knowing we’d talk up a storm, I suggested we focus on the food before the chat began. “You know I love living up on my island, but I do miss the luxury of having a huge choice of good food out the door everyday,” said Grant, who was so hungry he suggested we share three starters, the tartare of salmon and sea bass seasoned with lemongrass, ginger and zest of combava, the artichoke veloute with grilled shrimp and chicken-and-lardo-di-Colonnata quenelles (garnishes above before the soup arrived) and the sauté of wild mushrooms with poached egg and shavings of toasted coconut. If all three dishes were beautifully cooked, the detail that stood out for me was the way the coconut shavings brought both contrasting texture and a very subtly sweet mellowness to the wild mushrooms. Grant agreed: “The whole lot is delicious, but I don’t want you start talking food rot with me or it’ll wreck the meal.”

Warned off making my gastronomic observations public, I quietly enjoyed my cod in a lush ‘moqueca’ style sauce. In Brazil, a moqueca is a stew of salt-water fish cooked in coconut milk with tomatoes, onions, garlic, coriander and a little palm oil, and if Frutado’s version was much more refined than the rough-and-ready versions I’ve sampled in beachside restaurants near Recife, it was similarly luscious and deeply satisfying. Meanwhile, grunting Grant across the table was so happy with his marinated steak with manioc fries and a sauce of meat drippings boosted by acai berries (big, healthy fruits that come from Brazilian palm trees) that he got through it before I could exasperate him by trying to photograph the dish. “That was lovely,” he said, warning again, “But that doesn’t mean I want to talk food rot.” Instead he regaled me with the story of his latest affair, this time round with a young Presbyterian minister. “It’s a lot easier to be a poof up in Scotland these days than I thought it would be,” he said.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much of the desserts, because most hard-working young chefs don’t have the time or staff to soar at the sweet end of the meal and the ones I’ve had in Brazil were often too sweet for my tastes. So I let Grant go for the banana eclair and settled on some nice ‘pudim,’ or the nice eggy version of creme caramel you find in Brazil and Portugal, with beads of sweet potato marinated in caramel. They were both very good in different ways. The eclair showed off Furtado’s wit and capacity for being a very good student, since there was so much Gallic learning on display in this politely sideways presentation, and the pudim offered up the touchstone of why his food is so good: he has a maternal desire to make people happy and feed them well, and this observation is of course intended as a very big compliment. Or for a more succinct take on the evening from Grant: “Cool operator decor, great grub, sweet young guys–I’d go back.”

Bistro Paradis, 55 rue de Paradis, 10^th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 07.71.01.32.26 or 0 01.42.26.59.93. Metro: Cadet or Poissoniere. Open from Tuesday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. Lunch menu 23 Euros, Average a la carte 40 Euros. www.bistroparadis.fr

The post Bistro Paradis | A Tantalizing Taste of Tropical Umami at a Charming New Bistro, B appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

“THE LEFT BANK,” 15 Street & 6th Avenue, NYC….Er, um, well not quite.

If the food at Manero’s was good, no one could ever have accused it of being interesting, but then in those days no one wanted food that was interesting. To be sure, Westport had an excellent Chinese restaurant, West Lake, and the Italian food at the Apizza Center in nearby Fairfield was wonderful, too, but aside from a couple of New England-y seafood places—The Clam Box, etc., and a “French” restaurant downtown where they flambéed everything, but most of all the bill, the town offered slim pickings for anyone who really loved good food with the exception of the rather mysterious Café Varna, which served, rather amazingly in retrospect, Bulgarian food.

The local restaurant pulse quickened in the seventies with the opening of places like Viva Zapata, a Mexican place that Grandmother Drake heartily disapproved of—“Barbara,” she’d say to my mother, “You shouldn’t feed food like that to growing children”—and a fun little café called Bon Appetite.

During a recent trawl through southwestern Connecticut, I thought of this long ago gastronomic landscape and couldn’t help but be amazed by the variety of ethnic eating now on offer in the area, a reflection, I think of how Americans have become so much more adventurous at the table than they were forty years ago. I mean, who’d have ever thought that there’d be a half-decent Thai restaurant, the Little Thai Kitchen, in a white-bread suburb like Darien (Their pineapple fried rice is killer good) Or Ola, a really good pan-Latino place owned by Guatemalans in Orange, Connecticut just outside of New Haven.

To be honest, I didn’t expect much from the later on a rainy Sunday night, but my friend David was enthusiastic, and while traveling in the U.S., I enjoy being “off-duty,” and so rather less exigent than I am in Paris. The colorful “fiesta loca” décor and location in a strip mall encouraged me to seriously temper my expectations, so it was a surprise when lobster and avocado quezadillas with chipotle creme fraiche came to the table and were delicious. My churrasco beef—marinated skirt steak served with rice and beans. lime-horseradish-and-parsley chimichurri and long wands of deep-fried plantain, was excellent, too, although I’d have liked a bit more fire in the sauce, and David’s shrimp “Bahia” was wonderful—plump shrimp in a gentle but nicely seasoned sauce of coconut milk. With a good bottle of Rueda rose, this was an unexpectedly pleasant meal, and a perfect example of how terrifically cosmopolitan dining options have become all over the United States.

Back in New York City, I had one of the best Italian meals I’ve ever eaten at Danny Meyer’s new Maialino restaurant at the Gramercy Park hotel. This place is his homage to Roman trattoria, and he nails it perfectly with absolutely stunning food. The four of us swooned over a daily special of insalata Catalana—perfectly poached squid, prawns, and fish with diced tomatoes and tiny croutons in a brilliant lemon vinaigrette, a superb plate of Italian charcuterie, and tripe cooked with mint as first courses, and then tucked into malfatti with sublime shreds of roasted sucking pig in a lemony sauce, spaghetti alle vongole, roast suckling pig, and swordfish, all of which were outstandingly good.

In fact the only things I’d didn’t like about this place were the prices—staggering, and the décor, which was too high-concept with a fussy marquetry style floor. But the service was charming per all Meyer restaurants, the wine list had some terrific off-beat bottles, and the crowd was fun, too, including the just-in-from-LA couple nearby. She, a perfect cooing Barbie in sequins, and he sort of a junior Phil Spector type. Former boss and fellow diner Ruth Reichl advised me that Maialino also does one of the best breakfasts in New York, and I can’t wait to try it on a future visit. In the meantime, I’ll be remembering that roast suckling pig with rosemary potatoes with gunning salivia glands until my next trip to New York, where my other stand out meal was a superb dinner tasting menu at Kajitsu, a very beautiful Japanese restaurant in the East Village where the tempura sweet corn on steamed rice with corn soy sauce and Italian parsley was one of the best things I’ve eaten all year. In fact, the only place I really wanted to get to and missed was Kyochon, the Korean chicken restaurant on 5th Avenue that David Lebovitz made sound so appealing. What Grandmother Drake would have made of Korean fried chicken or udon with yuzu is beyond me, but I have a hunch she’d have preferred Manero’s. Myself, I return to Paris more impressed by the food in the U.S. than ever before.

Kajitsu, 414 East 9th Street, New York, NY, Tel. 212-228-4873, Tasting menu $70

Little Thai Kitchen, 4 West Avenue, Darien, CT, 203-662-0038, Avg lunch for two $60

Maialino, Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY, Tel. 212-777-2410. Avg dinner for two $150

Ola, 350 Boston Post Rd, Orange, CT, Tel. 203-891-0522, Avg dinner for two $100.

The post TRAVELS IN THE NEW WORLD: NYC—Maialino, A-; Kajitsu, A-; CT—Ola, B; Little Thai Kitchen, B- appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

On the way to this pretty art-deco brasserie in front of La Bourse in the 2nd arrondissement, I couldn’t help but being a tiny bit anxious about our decision, however. Why Most Paris brasseries have become caught in a no-go inflection point between their ever rising prices and the mediocrity of their food. I always remember Le Vaudeville as being a rare exception to this sad rule, but would I be disappointed?

After three hours of airplane air, we asked to sit outside on the terrace, and the hostess who promptly set our table and brought our menus was one of the friendliest and most cheerful people I’ve come across in a Paris restaurant in a very long time. So we ordered a dozen Gillardeau oysters with a carafe of Reisling, and then two steak tartares with two glasses of Guigal red Cotes du Rhone, a typical brasserie meal if ever there were one. The waiter brought good rolls and foiled wrapped knobs of salted Isigny butter to the table with our white wine, and breaking bread, and smearing it with good French butter, made us suddenly happy to be home. The oysters, which arrived in a heart beat, were absolutely delicious–fleshy, sweet and brilliantly briny.

The steak tartare was good, too, although an infuriating change in the format of the Heinz Worcestershire sauce bottle–they’ve enlarged the opening to the size of penny in an obvious attempt to get people to use more of the stuff, meant that both of us flooded our otherwise very nicely seasoned chopped steak with too much of this famous brown sauce that’s wonderful in small doses but downright foul in larger ones (at least you’ve been warned). Not having had any red wine for ten days–if I found several Greek roses that were great drinking, their reds are just too potent in hot weather for me, meant that the Guigal Cotes du Rhone drank like velvet, too. To be sure, the accompanying frites were cooked on the premises but definitely not home-made–too bad, but our mesclun salads were impressively fresh and seasoned with a light hand.

At 130 Euros, this was hardly a cheap feed, but at least it delivered exactly what a good Parisian brasserie should, which is good quality food with fast friendly service and the extra fun of the sort of intriguingly odd-ball crowd you’ll always find sitting down to dinner at 10.30pm. Now if Le Vaudeville can do it, and do it well, why are almost all other Parisians brasseries so damned dismal (I wouldn’t go to La Coupole at gunpoint, for example, to say nothing of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, La Lorraine, Brasserie Flo, well, you get the point.)

Le Vaudeville, 29 Rue Vivienne, 2nd, Tel. 01-40-20-04-26. Metro: Bourse. Open daily, noon-3pm, 7pm-1am.

Prix-fixe menus 24.50 Euros, 31.50 Euros. A la carte 55 Euros.

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Le Cirque d’Hiver  I love the neighborhood in and around the rue Amelot, including the fanciful Cirque d’Hiver, a charming oval polygon of a building that was constructed in 1852 as a sop to restive working-class Parisians. The idea of the building, now mostly used for fashion shows and other special events, was that it would house circuses and other amusements in the pre-cinema middle of the 19th century, and this explains its wonderful Wedgewood style friezes and neo-classical grandeur.

I hadn’t seen the Cirque in a while, but it happens to be next door to the new Les Enfants de Paris, a peculiar new Franco-Brazilian restaurant that unfortunately shows off all the reasons that hybrid bar-restaurant-night-club places just never work, especially in Paris. Arriving for dinner, the sidewalk out front was packed with smoking singles, and if I’m more tolerant of tobacco smoke than most people, the restaurant itself had the sour stink of their fags, not a pleasant detail as one studied the menu. The waitress mentioned that this is the sister restaurant of the popular Les Enfants Terrible in New York City, but it had none of the buzz of its trans-Atlantic cousin and offered far less value for money.

Since I love Brazil and enjoy Brazilian food, I was sort of looking forward to dinner here, but unfortunately, aside from the well-made cocktails from an extensive and expensive list, a lot gets lost in translation. My Bouchées bresiliennes, deep-fried nuggets stuffed with chopped chicken, had a pasty consistency, and the dipping sauce in a shot glass filled with lots of whole coriander seeds was too timid to add much interest. Next, Bobo de camarão, or frozen prawns in a pumpkin colored soup of coconut milk devoid of much flavor and accompanied by dried out Basmati rice and a silly shot glass of coriander-flavored whipped cream.

Bobo de camarão avec son emulsion de coriandre et riz basmati

At 18.50 Euros, I’d have been much happier with a steak tartare at my corner cafe La Rotonde, and the only useful, if rather deflating, idea I took away from this meal is that Paris still lags very much behind such cities as New York and London when it comes to offering seriously interesting ethnic eating. Aside from some fine North African restaurants and a few good Asian places, Indian food in Paris is generally depressingly mediocre, Latin American cooking comes across only in the most Disney-esque of cliches, with local Mexican cooking being downright awful, and the African food in Brussels is times better than Paris. And the only explanation I could hazard for this paucity of good foreign restaurants is that if the Parisian palate is more adventurous today than it was when I moved here almost 25 years ago, the French are still very much less venturesome at the table when it comes to international cooking than Berliners, Amsterdamers, Londoners, New Yorkers and San Franciscans. Thinking back on a brilliant Kurdish meal I recently ate in Stockholm, I can only hope this may change, since an edgy chef like Korean-American David Chang probably still wouldn’t get much of a look in in Paris today.

Les Enfants de Paris, 116 rue Amelot, 11th, Tel. 01-47-00-70-74. Metro: Filles de Calvaire. Open 5.30pm-2am. Average a la carte 40 Euros.

The post LE VAUDEVILLE, One of the Last Decent Brasseries in Paris, B; LES ENFANTS DE PARIS, Franco-Brazilian via New York City, C- appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.