In Hebrew, the word ‘Tekés’ means ceremony, with the implication of a celebration. In Paris, the word now has two meanings–the original Hebrew one, and a second one as the name of Tekés, a very popular new restaurant, which is also a cause for rejoicing, because it has brought modern Israeli vegetarian cooking to a city that’s long been lamentably well-known for its indifference to vegetables.

The long running exception to this generalization has been chef Alain Passard’s shudderingly expensive Michelin three-star restaurant Arpege, but now people who love good food and eat plant-based diets are finally getting a lot more choice in Paris. And many of these new places, including Tekés, are so good that even people who aren’t vegetarian will enjoy eating at them.

Tekés is tucked away in the Sentier, or Paris’s old garment district, which has now become a popular nightlife zone for younger Parisians with lots of bars, cafes and restaurants (Paris-lovers will note that this zone has replaced the superannuated rue de Soif in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, as this once delightful neighborhood has been drained of life by an infestation of identikit luxury brand-name boutiques and expensive pied-a-terre apartments). I liked this warm lively place immediately when I went there to meet a friend there for dinner. It’s run by the same Israeli team led by talented chef Assaf Granit that launched the hugely popular Shabour and Balagan, along with the just-opened Jerusalem street-food restaurant Shosh.

Led by chefs Cécile Levy, who formerly cooked at the Norman Hotel in Tel Aviv, and Dan Yosha, Tekés’s busy open kitchen privileges cooking over charcoal and embers, and it puts on a great show while producing stunningly delicious dishes like grilled zucchini with cinnamon labneh and flambéed eggplant.

The menu leads off with some outstanding breads, including a beautifully fluffy crown-shaped challah for sharing and a buttery sage-leaf garnished galette to tear apart and dip in labneh, and then runs to a suite of Vegan and vegetarian dishes, which are also meant to be shared. These are followed by a regularly evolving roster of Israeli comfort food dishes from different Jewish culinary traditions, which are also meant to be shared, another reason that a meal here ends up being such a good time.

I loved my beet-root chachlik, which came with feta cream and watercress and was every bit as satisfying in terms of taste and texture as any version made with meat, and my friend was delighted by her “The Silk Road,” a dish composed of celeriac, clementine, ginger and shushka. We were also intrigued by the vegetarian chicken liver, which is a composition of mixed mushrooms served with a soft-boiled egg, dates and pine nuts. All of these ingredients arrive table side and are then blended with a mezzaluna before being served. The unguent umami-rich hash actually does have distant echoes of chopped chicken liver, but it’s lighter and fresher than any version made with the fowl. Gnocchi (below) were absolutely delicious, too.

Desserts are intriguing, too, including a brilliant airy mushroom mousse with chocolate granola, a perfect grand finale to the healthy joyous cooking of this very good restaurant.

And walking home after dinner, I couldn’t help but feeling quietly ecstatic that a growing number of talented young chefs are finding ways to create dishes that are not only healthy and environmentally friendly but offer a full flush of gastronomic pleasure as well.

N.B. Tekés has one of the best and most interesting wine lists in Paris, with an especially strong selection of outstanding wines from Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Tekés, 4bis rue Saint Saveur, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 07 81 42 54 74, Metro: Open for dinner only Monday-Saturday. Closed Sunday. Average dinner 45 Euros. http://www.tekesrestaurant.com

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Chefs Pierre Toitou and Cyril Pham

The new Drum Cafe at the LUMA Foundation in Arles is an excellent example of how good a museum restaurant can actually be when someone cares about serving good food instead of the usual bland industrial food-service catering too often found at museums. The food at the Drum Cafe is so delectable that it’s very much coming here for a meal even if you’re not planning to the visit this new contemporary arts complex, which was recently created from a decommissioned rail yard and train-carriage maintenance workshops.

My curiosity about this place was first aroused very early in the morning a few weeks ago on a train from Nimes to the airport in Marseilles when I looked up from my book just long enough to catch a sudden thrilling glimpse of the new Frank Gehry designed metal-clad tower that has become the emblem of the LUMA Foundation. It came and went so unexpectedly that my reaction was all instinct–backdropped by the morning sky, the tower was intriguingly strange and oddly beautiful.

I’ve been reading about LUMA ever since its creation was announced  by Maja Hoffmann, the philanthropist heiress to the Hoffmann Laroche pharmaceutical fortune, but hadn’t yet found the time to go during a year made so busy by the publication of my new book MY PLACE AT THE TABLE: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris (Mariner Books). Then I learned that Pierre Toitou, whose cooking I’d loved when he was at Vivant and Deviant in Paris, had been cast with Cyril Pham as the first chefs for the museum’s new restaurant, the Drum Cafe.

So on a beautiful Indian summer Saturday in Provence, Bruno and I headed south for lunch and a visit to the museum.

The restaurant is located on the ground floor (rez-de-chaussée) of the Frank Gehry tower on the grounds of the LUMA Foundation. Coming through the door, there’s a bar and a few tables in a dark foyer, while the main dining room has a single large horse-shoe shaped table at the bottom of an atrium lined with book shelves and decorated by polychrome pipes overhead that reminded me of the Centre Pompidou; all of these years later, this architectural feint is still fresh and fun, too.

Seated, we immediately ordered two glasses of a delicious organic white wine made in the Camargue from Viognier grapes and a plate of panisses with cured anchovies and fried sage leaves to nibble on while we studied the menu. Ever since I first ate a panisse (a chickpea flour bar) in Nice as a backpacking student a very longtime ago, I’ve never been able to get enough of them, and the ones served here were very good.

The menu was fascinating, too, since Toitou is such a gastronomic vagabond. As I over-heard him explaining to a neighboring quartet, “My father (Jean Toitou, founder of the Paris fashion label A.P.C.) is a Tunisian Jew and my mother is Russian and Norman. Growing up we ate a lot of Japanese food at home, because my parents love it and traveled to Japan often, but we never had French dishes like boeuf bourguignon, because no one knew how to cook them.” Toitou has cooked everywhere from the Hotel Plaza Athenee (Alain Ducasse) in Paris to London (Sketch by Pierre Gagnaire) to Uruguay. He’s also previously done a Pop-up in Arles with Arrmand Arnal of La Chassagnette and is an avid traveler.

All of this comes through in a brief but intriguing menu of mostly Mediterranean dishes that are brilliantly jolted by techniques and ingredients from other cultures. These small-plate dishes that are meant to be shared are sort of exactly what many people want to eat right now as we tentatively emerge from the COVID pandemic. To wit, this food is fresh, seasonal, health, straight forward and booming with umami, or just the cure for people who’ve become bored by the limits of their own skills in the kitchen after cooking non-stop for months.

Finally, we settled on an oxtail terrine (presse de boeuf) with black olive mayonnaise and a salad of fresh herbs and mushrooms in Satay sauce with chili oil and lime leaves. If the rich and brilliantly succulent terrine was profoundly French in the best traditions of rock of ages bistro cooking, the mushrooms registered like some sort of ecstatically good street-food dish you might come across in Bali. One way or another, both plates were beautifully made, generously served and deeply satisfying.

It was pretty obvious that word-of-mouth was working, too, since many of the other people having lunch around us were curious and gastronomically adventurous locals, or the sort of people who support inventive and creative chefs in smaller towns and rural settings all over France.

As depicted above, our main courses might look a bit ferocious but both dishes were outstanding. Homemade cuttlefish ink cavatelli with a cuttlefish ragu was brightened by a pepperoncini fired red blaze of melted ‘Nduja, the soft sausage from Calabria that’s one of my favorite kitchen helpers. (Why When I don’t have time to cook a sauce as rich and ruddy as the succulent cuttlefish ragout, ‘Ndjua adds a lot of flavor to pasta just tossed with olive oil, capers and a sprinkling of smoked salt.) Frankly, I also liked the way that this dish cocked a snook at the usual conventions of food styling in the age of Instagram, too. What Toitou seemed to be reminding us is that taste should always trump fiddly prettiness and that food should be allowed to look like, well, food.

The plating of the grilled marinated octopus tentacle posed on top of a beautifully made potato cake also seemed intended to titillate with a first impression of gruesomeness. One way or another, it was excellent, since the octopus has been marinated to give its meat a creamy tenderness and the char added wonderful flavor to the dish, as did an Indian condiment, raita, which is yogurt with chopped cucumber, pepper and herbs. The potato cake was a highly engineered version of pomme Anna, minus the large amount of butter usually found in this dish. Instead, the potatoes had been finely sliced, neatly formed into a loaf and baked, to create a garnish I could happily eat everyday.

Since we were planning to visit the galleries in the LUMA tower after lunch, we decided to share a dessert, a slice of tarta de Santiago. It presented as a sort of delicious spiced cake made with ground almonds and was garnished with prunes in spiced syrup.

Curious about its origins, I poked around we got home and discovered that it’s a recipe from Galicia in Spain that dates back to the Middle Ages. Translated into English, its name means ‘the cake of Saint James,’ a reference to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that passes through Galicia to culminate at the city of Santiago de Compostella. The top of the cake is often decorated with powdered sugar and an imprint of the Cross of Saint James, but the version served at the Drum Cafe was naked, ecumenical and delicious. Interestingly, the European. Union granted the Tarta de Santiago a PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) in 2010; this means that any qualifying tarta must be made in Galicia and contain at least 33% almonds.

Pierre Toitou is in residence at the Drum Cafe until January 2022, when a new chef(s) will arrive, because the idea of the Drum Cafe is to host a regularly changing roster of different chefs in its kitchen, an increasingly popular restaurant concept everywhere.

N.B. The Drum Cafe is open only for breakfast and lunch.

Drum Cafe, LUMA Arles, Parc des Ateliers, 45 Chemin des Minimes – 33 Avenue Victor Hugo, Arles.Tel. (33) 04 65 88 10 00, Average 45 Euros. Open Wednesday to Monday 10am – 6pm, Closed Tuesday. Lunch menu served from noon to 3pm. Reservations strongly suggested via website: https://www.luma.org/en/arles/visit-us/eating-and-drinking-on-the-parc-des-ateliers/drum-cafe

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Julia Sedefdjian

In Nicoise dialect, a ‘baieta’ is a little kiss. In Paris, Baieta is brilliant young chef Julia Sedefdjian’s new restaurant in the Latin Quarter and a place where any meal has the poignancy of receiving a succession of little kisses. This is because Sedefdjian’s personal riff on the cooking of Nice, her hometown, and Provence is so sincere, succulent, sunny, shyly sensual and stunning in its technical perfection. And all this is from a chef who is only 23 years old and who won her first Michelin star while cooking at Les Fables de la Fontaine when she was 21 (she started at the restaurant when she was 17 and became its chef at 20).

Sedefdjian created her restaurant with Sébastien Jean-Joseph and Grégory Anelka, two colleagues she met while working at Les Fables de la Fontaine. Jean-Joseph is her sous-chef, while the charming and very friendly Anelka runs the dining room. She calls them “my brothers,” and the three of them are depicted in a drawing by their favorite tattoo artist on the dining room wall.

While you read the menu at Baieta, several little hors d’oeuvres are served to pique your appetite. Sedefdjian’s take on pissaladiere, the sautéed onion, black olive and anchovy tart of Nice–something I love, was excellent on a focaccia like base.

The menu was very tempting, too, especially for someone like me, who loves the food of Nice and southern France, all those wonderful dishes that are found in one of my favorite cookbooks, La Cuisiniere Provencale by J.B. Reboul.

When he came to take our order, Grégory Anelka told us that the two signature dishes here are the “Jaune d’oeuf croustillante,” a starter, and the “Bouillabaieta,” Sedefdjian’s version of bouillabaisse. We decided we’d try them both, and also the caramelised pork belly with celery rave puree, peanuts and an herby green sauce and cod with cockles on a bed of Sardinian fregola pasta with artichokes and olives under a cloud of preserved garlic. The one dish that I’d been hoping to find on the menu, Sedefdjian’s superb version of a classic aioli–cod with vegetables and potatoes with garlic mayonnaise, wasn’t an option, but I’m hoping it will appear on a future menu, since I’ve never forgotten how good it was since I had it at La Table de la Fontaine when she was cooking there.

While we waited over a glass of white wine, both of us noticed something else very special about this restaurant, which is that it has a noticeably happy, relaxed ambience. This is a welcome new trend in Paris, where serious food is increasingly being freed of a conventional corset of formality and stilted pleasure-wilting self-importance.

The egg yolk in a crunchy sphere showed off just the fact that Sedefdjian is an inventive, hard-working and very talented chef with a huge future. When it arrived at the table, my first reaction was to admire it, but I wondered if it would all come together on the palate. It did. Served on a bed of smoked and raw haddock, the yolk spilled out on to the fish, poached leeks and seaweed vinaigrette when the sphere was pierced and bound this homey and deeply satisfying dish together.

The caramelised pork belly was a beautiful plate of food, too, with tender chunks of pork glossed in a beautiful jus, celery rave prepared three ways–as chips, in seared cubes and as a puree, and the green puree of ramps (l’ail des ours, garlic of the bears) was a perfect foil for the wonderfully fatty meat.

“Both of these dishes could be served in a haute-cuisine restaurant,” Bruno observed, and he was absolutely right. Happily, however, they’re available at a charming place without the stratospheric prices associated with that most exalted and so rarely experienced level of French cooking.

Our main courses were stunning. The ‘Bouillabaieta” was an especially good dish, since Sedefjdian had recomposed it, cooking the fish and shellfish separately and then combining it with a potato-puree thickened fish stock that was accented by little toasts with rouille served on the side. What made this so excellent is that the fish didn’t lose their natural flavors to the single ruddy stew, as is usually the case, but remained firm and bright with flavor.

The cod was outstanding, too–a thick perfectly cooked slice of impeccably fresh fish on a bed of al dente fregola with steamed cockles and razor-shell clams, artichokes and slivered olives under a veil of garlic. Here the flavors complimented each other rather than melding together, another example of Sedefjdian’s respect for the produce she works with.

What also impressed about this meal was the excellence of its rhythm. On a very busy night–many tables turned twice, the timing–both in terms of cooking and serving, was flawless. In fact, the only thing about this meal that I found unimportantly wanting was the wine list–to wit, I’d have loved to eat this food with a nice bottle of Bellet, the wine from Nice, but none was to be found on the list.

Our desserts were excellent, too. I loved my delicate fennel spiked sable topped with dots of lemon cream and meringue, while Bruno tucked into a cheeky poached pear with a tuile that stuck its tongue out at him and was garnished with a pool of chestnut ice and chestnut coulis.

Sedefdjian is one of the best young chefs in a new generation who are revisiting the regional roots of French cooking to renew the luster of Paris as the Old World’s pre-eminent dining destination, and I am certain that she will become a chef on par with predecessors like Paul Bocuse and Joel Robuchon–she’s just that good. So go now to catch a rising star and have a really lovely meal without a wound to your wallet.

The view from the loo

5 rue de Pontoise, 5th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-42-02-59-19. Metro: Maubert-Mutualite. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Average 45 Euros. www.restaurant-baieta-paris.fr

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The superb modern Franco-Israeli cooking currently being served (until November 2016) by Israeli born chef Tamir  Nahmias at the restaurant Fulgurances in eastern Paris proves that the most important recent gastronomic development in the city is its emergence as the world’s premier culinary talent cluster. To wit, in the same way that ambitious young computer engineers and software developers head for the Silicon Valley in California, Paris has emerged as the quintessential venue for talented upcoming chefs from all over the world.

The ever accelerating internationalization of the city’s culinary talent pool has not only renewed the gastronomic  pre-eminence of the French capital in the 21st century, but the trend has also made Paris an edgy and profoundly original place to eat. And perhaps the best news of all is that this fresh talent is adding a new layer to a gastronomic landscape that may never have been as rich with possibilities, since the spectrum of choices in Paris, from proudly traditional bistros to intriguingly avant-garde pop-ups is unique for a major European city.

Tamir Nahmias

Tamir Nahmias is a perfect example of the young talent migrating to Paris. He worked for three years as second to Gregory Marchand at Frenchie, and also cooked with Adeline Grattard at Yam’Tcha and Pascal Barbot at L’Astrance. And now he’s in Paris to stay, because, he explains, “It’s the most exciting place to cook in the whole world, both in terms of the sophistication of the restaurant-going public and their openess to innovation, but also the quality of the produce, the gastronomic culture of France, and the spectacular community of chefs in the city.”

With this background, Fulgurances, which was opened last October by Hugo Hivernat, Sophie Coribert and Rebecca Asthalter, the same team that publish the gastronomic review of the same name, is the ideal transitional setting for Nahmias as he prepares to open a restaurant of his own sometime later this year (in French, a fulgurance is like a lightning bolt, or a revelation). Nahmias’s stint running the kitchen here–Fulgurances works on the basis of a six-month showcase, allows him to refine his impending menu and also build a clientele before he hangs out his own shingle.

On the basis of the 44 Euro prix-fixe dinner I enjoyed at this charming restaurant the other night, the inhabitants of the 11th Arrondissement–Nahmias plans to stay in the neighborhood, are going to be very lucky indeed, because his very personal metissage of the Israeli and French kitchens is stunningly good and perfectly calibrated. Since I love the big bold flavors of all the kitchens of the eastern Mediterranean–Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese, Israeli and Egyptian, I worried they might be toned down too much here in deference to the perceived timidity of the French palate. Happily, almost every dish we tried preserved the integrity and authenticity of Israeli food at the same time it endowed it with a winsome refinement and casual elegance.

Nahmias’s prix-fixe evolves regularly but begins with a series of mezzes that included the night we were there a supremely tender grilled octopus tentacle with a griddle lemon and some Israeli ketchup; green beans with cherries, almonds and fresh herbs–a wonderfully summery combination; and a superb hazelnut and za’atar garnished beet-and-yogurt puree.

Garnished with a light vinaigrette and capers, grilled white asparagus and red mullet with salad was a pleasant dish, but the stand-out among the main courses was a luscious cumin-scented roasted shoulder of lamb served on a bed of wheat berries and green lentils. The tender meat was wholly redolent of the spices in the glaze that glossed it, and fresh herbs, including mint and parsley, and some appealing freshness.

An outstanding selection of natural wines by the glass was served with our meal, which concluded with a beautifully made apricot tart, and over coffee, I couldn’t help but reflecting that aside from Nahmias’s brilliant cooking, the other reason I’d enjoyed this meal so much was the warmth, professionalism and enthusiasm of everyone who works here. What Hivernat, Coribert and Asthalter have done is unlace the corset of aloofness that too often afflicts young restaurants in Paris, with the result that the ambience in this casual dining room is a reflection of the fact that their customers are warm and contented. It was also clear that this table has become a neighborhood favorite, which creates a good demographic ballast for the kitchen to work with.

Fulgurances is a delightful restaurant, to which I look forward to returning for Nahmias’s cooking before he opens his much anticipated new place, and for the pleasure of discovering the chefs who follow him. It’s also one of the best value meals in Paris right now.

10 rue Alexandre Dumas, 11th Arrondissement, Paris, tel. (33) 9-81-09-33-32, Metro: Rue des Boulets, Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through Saturday, Closed Sunday-Tuesday, 19, 22€ lunch menus, 44€ dinner menu, www.fulgrances.com

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Domaine Fontenille by Serge Chapuis

When the summer throngs descend upon the Luberon, the tenderloin of Provence, this year, I have no doubt that Le Champ des Lunes, the table gastronomique of the magnificent new Domaine de Fontenille hotel outside of Lauris near Lourmarin, will become one of the season’s most sought-after reservations. Chef Jérôme Faure may be a native of the Jura, the mountainous region of eastern France on the border of Switzerland best known for its Comte cheese and Montbeliard sausages and the place where he won a Michelin star, but in the space of a few of months, he has brilliantly created a very personal and strikingly creative new contemporary Provencale cuisine that’s based on superb local seasonal produce.

Chef Jerome Faure of Le Domaine Fontenille @ Serge Chapuis

“It’s not exactly breaking news, but the best thing about Provence for a chef is the incredible produce,” says the amiable Faure, who scouted local markets and chatted up farmers to create his own unique network of suppliers for the two restaurants he runs at the hotel, Le Champ des Lunes, the gastronomic table with an open kitchen overlooking a dining room with polished cement floors, dangling lamps with Edison bulbs, and re-editions of classic modern furniture, including Charles and Ray Eames chairs, and La Cuisine d’Amélie, a simpler bistro with a southern accent.

Lunes Domaine Fontenille by Serge Chapuis

During the course of an overnight stay at this lovely new hotel, I was lucky enough to eat twice at Le Champ des Lunes, and aside from the wonderful food, one of the things I liked best about these meals was the dining room itself. I love Provence but it was refreshing to dine in a space that was more worldly and urbane than most of the restaurants in the region. There wasn’t a ribbon tied bunch of lavender, a faience cicada or an inch of fussy Souleiado fabric to be seen anywhere in this cool, hip space with a lot of natural light. Like the decors throughout the Domaine de Fontenille, this bracing good taste is the work of owners Frédéric Biousse and Guillaume Foucher, who own art galleries in Paris and Brussels.

But what interested me most, bien sur, was Jérôme Faure’s cooking, and lunching with friends, my curiosity was immediately rewarded by a superbly seasonal composition of all the tender spring vegetables that induce a pulse-racing desire at this time of the year–fava beens, asparagus, and tiny peas, plus a baby leek, Savoy cabbage, and broccoli in a pool of watercress-and-sorrel bouillon that was garnished with an improbably pleasant scoop of pistachio ice cream and spiked with Chartreuse, the potent but tonifying–or so I’d like to think–herbal elixir made by monks in Faure’s native region. As an introduction to Faure’s style and gastronomic logic, I was completely conquered, since this dish seemed to have been conjured up to appeal directly to the subliminal interface between my cerebral and carnal hungers. Or in other words, it was profoundly healthy but also packed a solid punch of pleasure.

This easy equilibrium between higher and lower desires turned out to the be the rather wonderful theme of this meal, too. Olive oil poached salmon came with brussels sprout beignets on beds of split-pea puree, and the earthiness of the vegetal garnishes was unexpectedly flattering to the fish, while a strip of baked seeds, sprouts and pulses not only served as a banner of nutritional good intentions but brought some welcome texture to the composition. And the other gastronomic theme that made the meal so pleasant was Faure’s unselfconscious playfulness in terms of garnishes of sprouts, petals and flowers and food that was as visually interesting looking as it was delectable.

This was especially true of dessert, a declension of Valrohna chocolate with cep mushroom ice cream, an idea I intend to steal for a summer barbecue meal dessert, since the mixture of funkiness and sweetness was so sexy.

Normally, it’s a bit dull to eat at the same restaurant twice in a row, but after a visit to the new winery at Le Domaine de Fontenille and a big thumping nap, that great luxury of a night away in the country, I was really looking forward to dinner that night, and Faure’s nocturnal performance was every bit as charming as his noontime one. We ate some beautiful foie gras with seared citrus and yuzu coulis, and then a superb preparation of juicy free-range Mont Ventoux pork with Granny Smith apple twigs, pear, and gnocchi in a sauce charcuterie (cooking juices deglazed with mustard and vinegar) spiked with locally grown saffron. When the pork arrived at the table, I couldn’t help but thinking of how my mother might react to its rareness, since such is her fear of undercooked pork that it always came to the table in a rather unpalatable gray hue when I was a child. That said, the reason this pork could be eaten so rare is that it was organically raised from an heirloom breed and then slow cooked.

And as if I needed another demonstration of the chef’s wit and talent, the meal concluded with a millefeuille of candied carrots and ice cream made with Caissons d’Aix nougat candies. I have a skittish sweet tooth, but this was excellent, since the earthiness of the carrots tempered the sweetness of the pastry cream and ice cream in the same way the cep ice cream had cut the richness of the chocolate dessert at noon.

So with the arrival of Jérôme Faure at Le Domaine de Fontenille, Provence has gained a very talented and interesting chef who will doubtless shake-up the stale culinary tropes of this very beautiful region. And on the basis of the dining room being filled with locals at both of the meals I had here, word is getting around very quickly, too. So I can’t think of a better address–both the restaurant and the hotel–with which to greet the summer, and the next time I go, I’ll look forward to sampling Faure’s simpler bistro menu at La Cuisine d’Amélie.

Domaine de Fontenille, Route de Roquefraiche, Lauris, Tel. (33) 04-13-98-00-00, Le Champs des Lunes: prix-fixe menus 38 Euros, 40 Euros, 62 Euros, and 112 Euros; La Cuisine d’Amélie: average a la carte 30 Euros. www.domainedefontenille.com 

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The best restaurant on the Cote d’Azur, the storied Mediterranean stalking ground of the world’s rich and famous that’s known as the Riviera in English, is Mirazur. It makes me happy to be this blunt, too, since the Riviera–I’ll opt for the English parlance, is encrusted with fussy over-priced restaurants where eager gastronomic novices flock every summer only to be fleeced and disappointed. Oh, to be sure, they’re many wonderful restaurants along the coast, but they’re usually the simple ones not the fancy places with waiters in tuxedos and food that’s served under silver-plated domes. I’m talking about great little bistros like L’Armoise in Antibes or Agua and L’Ecole de Nice in Nice. So the definitive superlative I’m awarding here is in the context of what the French call haute cuisine, or the very best cooking, and at this most ambitious and most expensive end of the food chain, very few of the restaurants exalted by famous guidebooks warrant the wound to your wallet.  Mirazur does.

I hadn’t been here since I came for lunch two years ago when I was researching HUNGRY FOR FRANCE, and as much as I enjoyed that meal, I wasn’t able to really lose myself in the beauty of chef Mauro Colagreco’s cooking, because I was with a photographer who was shooting every dish we’d ordered for the book. So this time was different. For one thing, I was alone, which was fine, since sometimes it’s a pleasure to embark on a long leisurely meal by yourself and especially with a stunningly beautiful view of the Mediterranean as company. So I sipped a flute of rose Champagne and looked forward to the tasting menu that was shortly to unfold. It began with a trio of delicate hors d’oeuvres, including a sampling of fresh tomatoes from the garden that Colagreco has on the hillside just across the street from his restaurant, a beignet of smoked eel, and a seaweed strewn clam on the half-shell with an intriguing garnish of leche de tigre, the Peruvian sauce that’s used to make ceviche and which is a liquefied mixture of fish, lemon, onion and ají.

The clam brought on a rush of pleasure with its simplicity and also because it awoke my memories of why I’ve always loved Colagreco’s cooking. The Argentine born chef, who trained with a variety of great French chefs, including the late Bernard Loiseau, Alain Passard, Alain Ducasse and Guy Martin, has a lyrical gastronomic signature all his own–his food is stunningly fresh and exudes a tenderness both in its execution and its aesthetics. This makes it a surprise to meet Colagreco, by the way, since he’d make a good rugby player, but then again, looks are often, or even usually, deceiving. And as if to confirm my musings, the first course of my meal arrived, a plump Gillardeau oyster with shallot cream, tapioca pearls, and a riff on the pear that include balls of the fruit and its juice. It would never have occurred to me that pears could make an oyster more eloquent, but the sweetness of the fruit teased the lactic flavors of the bivalve, with tiny sprigs of salicorne, or crunchy seaweed, serving as punctuation. This dish was a quiet elegant edible surprise, which is what the best haute cuisine is always about.

The salad of beans with fleshy almost black Napoleon cherries, pistachios and razored slices of zucchini was similarly delicate, completely unexpected and deeply refreshing. Eating it with some of the hot bread that was served at the same time with a little pool of olive oil and a brilliant poem about bread by Pablo Neruda, I resolved to attempt some version of it at home, but I rather doubt I’ll be able to find cherries as good as Colagreco’s in Paris. Freshness and a mastery of cooking times so precise they seem calibrated to the quarter second are the fundaments of Colagreco’s cooking.

His palate is restrained and very subtle, too–he wants you to taste his beautiful produce and would almost never do anything that would obscure its natural flavors. Sometimes he sublimates them, though, by matting them against a contrasting flavor, as was true of my next course,  sea snails, squid and zucchini in a gently tamarind seasoned broth, and the brilliant dish that followed, seared squid finely sliced into ribbons with a bagna caudal, the Piemontese sauce made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil and butter.

This meal may be starting to sound like a lot of food, but it wasn’t, because portions hit that sweet spot between fiddly tasting plates and a full serving, and the pacing of the meal was impeccable. It helped, too, that the general atmosphere in this restaurant is palpably happy and relaxed, or light years from what one might usually expect at a Michelin two star table. The dish that followed was my favorite, a filet of Chapon on a ragout of chickpeas, tiny zucchini, and cod tripe with fennel flowers. The various textures of the ragout flattered the fish and the gently contrasting tastes constituted one of the most magnificently subtle Mediterranean muddles I’ve ever tasted.

Roasted shoulder of lamb pirouetted away from the primal tastes of the Chapon with a vivid sauce of fresh plums and vanilla that served as an elegant prelude to dessert. On this warm afternoon, with dessert looming, I found myself hoping that they’d be small and refreshing.

So I was delighted when a rosewater granite with raspberries and blueberries came to the table. For me, this superb meal could have ended here, but Colagreco had a final surprise in store. Once I’d shattered the transparent pane of sugar on top of the bowl it came in, the saffron-flavored cream with a foam of new almonds and orange sorbet was just about the most perfect summer dessert I could imagine, since the saffron had the effect of gently tucking the palate in for a nap after the delicious ardors of a spectacular meal. Colagreco is a brilliant chef.

Mirazur, 30 avenue Aristide Briand, Menton, Tel. (33) 04-92-41-86-86. Email : reservation@mirazur.fr  www.mirazur.fr  Summer hours (mid July to the end of August): Open Thursday to Sunday for lunch, open daily for dinner; Winter hours (mid-February to early November): Open Wednesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. Prix-fixe menus 47 Euros (not served on weekends), 70 Euros, 100 Euros, 140 Euros.

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