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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Le P’Tit Canon is perfect and very happy example of a good uncomplicated Parisian neighbourhood bistro. It’s a lively friendly well-run place with a pretty Belle Epoque style dining room with a big bar up front where you can stop by on your own for a glass of wine or a quick bite. In less of a rush, you come for a sit-down meal of well-prepared traditional bistros dishes that deliver a solid flush of French comfort-food satisfaction. Prices are reasonable, and the wine list is interesting, from the well-chosen and accessible house wines to better bottles that carry a much gentler markup over retail prices than is usually found in Paris restaurants.

You don’t come here for cutting-edge cooking, but rather for good solid Gallic grub prepared with high quality ingredients. Still, the menu winks at what Parisians like to eat these days, since there are several meal-sized salads on the menu, along with a cheese burger.

So when Bruno came into my office and asked me if I had an idea of somewhere festive and not too expensive where we could good with his mother, visiting from Valenciennes; his sister up from her home in Florence; her son, who’s studying film in Rome, and his Venezuelan girlfriend, also living in Rome and studying medical technology, I immediately suggested Le P’tit Canon. I knew the menu here would please his cassoulet-loving mother and also work for his vegetarian sister, and that the salads would make the students happy. As for me, a good steak tartare was already on my radar, and Bruno loves confit de canard, which is rarely found on Paris menus very often anymore.

“This is just like those Paris bistros you see in the movies,” said Matthias, Bruno’s Italian nephew when we arrived here, a hungry multi-generational group speaking four different languages at the table. “Tres charmant, est bien Parisien,” pronounced Bruno’s mother, who hadn’t been to Paris for several years. So we translated the menu aloud for those who don’t speak French, and everyone found something to make them happy.

The Italians were craving foie gras, which is made in house and served with raisin-bread toast and onion compote or as part of a salade folly (crazy salad)–green beans and mushrooms garnished with foie gras. Bruno couldn’t resist the marinated herring, I love their terrine de campagne and Madame Midavaine fancied some escargots, and his sister opted for the oeufs mayonnaise. Since everyone preferred white wine, and I suspect we’d likely get through several bottles, I ordered a fresh easy-drinking Viognier from the Gard at a very easy-on-the-wallet 21 Euros, and it was very pleasant.

Everyone ordered different main courses from those I predicted, since there were three andouillettes with mustard sauce and frites, a cassoulet, a steak tartare and a salad garnished with goat cheese and salmon. I haven’t gone near an andouillette, a rather pungent tripe sausage, since a first rather unhappy encounter with one the first week I was living in Paris, but they made Bruno, his mother and his nephew happy. Bruno’s sister was quite content with her salad, and his nephew’s beautiful girlfriend loved her steak tartare. For my part, a good ruddy cassoulet with two types of sausage, a generous piece of confit de canard and a generous portion of white beans in a soupy tomato sauce was exactly what I wanted at the end of a busy day when I’d had to walk all over Paris–transit strike oblige, buying last-minute Christmas presents.

At dinner we had an interesting conversation that spun on a question ventured by Bruno’s sister: “What are the two greatest cuisines in the world#8221; she asked us. The Italians all predictably affirmed that the Italian kitchen would be one of them, while Bruno’s mother announced the grandeur of Gallic gastronomy. For my part, I insisted on six: French, Italian, Indian, Moroccan, Chinese and Mexican. And you?

Dessert was a stretch for me, but the Italians couldn’t resist the baba au rhum and a nicely made creme caramel. An inevitable question was directed my way during the sweet stretch of our meal: “Alec, what were your best meals of 2019#8221; Here, in no particular order, are the tables I most enjoyed during the last twelve months

**La Scene, Paris

**KGBbis, Paris

**Pavyllon, Paris

**Maison par Sota Atsumi, Paris

**Shabour, Paris

**Substance, Paris

**Racine, Reims

**A Pignata, Levie, Corsica

**Frevo, New York City

**Stubborn Seed, Miami Beach, Florida

**Ixi’Im, Chochola, Yucatan, Mexico

Our joyous meal concluded with little snifters of Chartreuse, a holiday gift from the charming proprietor of this eminently amiable restaurant, and, as it turned, out exactly what we needed to ended up watching the first two episodes of the new season of “The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel” when we got home. So Le P’tit Canon ably hit its target, and a very good time was had by all.

N.B. This is a great address for a late lunch or dinner, since serving hours are 10.30am to 3.30pm and 6.30pm to 2am.

36 rue Legendre, 17th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-47-63-63-87, Metro: Villiers or Pont Cardinet, Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday dinner only, closed Sunday. Average 35 Euros. www.leptitcanonparis.fr

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Mieux, which means ‘better’ in English, is a wonderful name for a restaurant, because it declares gastronomic ambition but with a certain appealing humility. This charmingly decorated and cleverly designed bistro just five minutes from my front door in the rue Saint Lazare delivers better than just better, though, since the contemporary French bistro cooking is delicious, and the service is charming. Restaurant Mieux also has a very good wine list.

The bistro, which opened last May, is the project Baptiste Bayle, Giulian Maiuri and Thomas Bonnel, three nice guys who did all of the work of renovating this space themselves, including pouring a cement bar, buffing the Fifties tiles they discovered when they pulled up the floorboards, combing flea-markets for the great-looking bric-a-brac and chairs from a French school that gives this place its homey atmosphere and renovating a secondhand Spaziale coffee machine, which is now used to make great java with Brûlerie de Belleville beans. Guilian, who formerly worked at the Maison Breguet and the Trianon Palace in Versailles, heads up the kitchen.

I first noticed Restaurant Mieux on the way home from doing some errands in the rue des Martyrs, and immediately liking its look and menu, I went in and booked for dinner for me and Bruno that same night. And I marveled at how gastronomic my own neighborhood has become, and in just the terms I like best—intelligently creative contemporary French bistro cooking that highlights carefully sourced seasonal produce and spins on an axis of sincerity and generosity.

Little did I know that the 9th Arrondissement would emerge as one of the best restaurant neighborhoods in Paris when we crossed the Seine from the tiny apartment where we once lived on the rue du Bac and bought our first, and then second, apartments in this arrondissement. But the 9th has turned into a sweet-spot location for restauranteurs, because the offices in this central Paris district assure a busy lunch crowd and then the food-loving locals and tourists from the growing numbers of hotels in this charming part of the city take over in the evening.

Arriving, the welcome was warm and the service immediately warm and alert but relaxed, which explained why the dining room was filled with such a cross-section of residents of the district once known as La Nouvelle Athenes, because so much of its architecture was originally inspired by ancient Greece when this part of the city was first developed from 1819 onwards. During the 19th century, this quartier was popular with artists, writers, musicians and actors, including George Sand, Eugène Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas, Frederic Chopin, Victor Hugo, Théodore Géricault, Pissarro, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. It was also known for being a neighborhood of kept women.

This arty liberal tradition lives on in the 9th, which is still home to many writers, photographers, artists, musicians and other creatives, and it’s that increasingly endangered but wonderful thing—a peaceful and unselfconscious historic neighborhood in the heart of a great western city. Gentrification is making it more affluent, but the social tone happily remains unchanged.

The menu here runs to three starters, three main courses and three desserts, sometimes more, which change regularly to reflect the kitchen’s desire to cook spontaneously. “The produce writes the menu here,” our waiter told us when he came to take our order.

On the first night of the year when there was an early autumnal chill in the air and after a summer of salads, I started with the homemade terrine of chicken livers and pork, with the livers adding an earthy unctuousness and the pork some carnal resonance and bite, which came with pickled onions and carrots. Bruno’s bonheur was the veal tartare made with marscapone and seasoned with crushed roasted cashews—an excellent idea, chervil and chives. And because we’d both been curious about the other starter that night, the waiter thoughtfully brought us a little tasting plate of the tomatoes with watermelon, cucumbers, feta, mint and Kalamata olives, a wonderfully refreshing dish that tasted like a happy souvenir of a summer vacation in the Greek Islands.

Our main courses were outstanding, too. Bruno’s free-range pork chop from the Auvergne was succulent and garnished with coarse ground polenta and roasted carrots from the Ile de France and a wonderful saute of wild mushrooms. I was tempted by the risotto with sage butter, zucchini and smoked ricotta, but  I’ve lived in Paris for too long to ever to order this dish in a restaurant I don’t know, because the rice is unfailingly overcooked. So I ordered with maigre (croaker fish) with potatoes, cabbage and clams in seaweed butter, and it was so skillfully cooked that I wouldn’t hesitate to trust the kitchen with rice the next time I come here. Portions were so generous that all we could manage at the end of the meal was a shared portion of stewed juicy ruby-red peche de vigne—the world’s best peaches, with lemon-verbena ice cream and hazelnut crumble. An excellent selection of cheeses was also available.

Restaurant Mieux is a place where you can easily become a regular, and it’s a table I’d happily go on my own, since they have a few spots at the bar for solo diners who’d rather sit on a stool than at a table. It also has several large tables that accommodate groups of six, eight or twelve, which makes it a great choice for an easygoing night out over a very good meal with a group of friends. It’s solidly good but unpretentious restaurants like Mieux which assure Paris’s enduringly superlative gastronomic credentials.

21 rue de Saint-Lazare, Paris, 9th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01- 71-32-46-73.
Métro: Trinite or Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Open Monday noon-6pm, Tuesday-Friday noon to 1am, Saturday 6pm-1am. Sunday noon-6pm. Lunch menus 21€ and 26€, average a la carte for dinner 40€. www.mieux-restaurant.com

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Victor and Charly, founders of the Brasserie Bellanger

The recent opening of Brasserie Bellanger is another sign of one of the best dining trends in Paris today–the renaissance of city’s affordable dining scene. This category of restaurants had long been abandoned by most Parisians to backpacking students as the food they served slouched towards mediocrity. Now, though, an excellent variety of new addresses are serving up some very good simple Gallic grub at easygoing prices in lively, friendly restaurants, many of which are also usefully open daily. Brasserie Bellanger, which is an easy walk from both the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est in the 10th Arrondissement, is a very good example.

Brasserie Bellanger opened after the piece on affordable dining in Paris I recently wrote for the New York Times, which you can read here, was published, but it certainly belongs in the company of the tables I reviewed in that article. It has an interesting back story, too. Victor and Charly, two friends who previously worked as chefs in the restaurants of Eric Frechon and Jean-Louis Nomicos, decided they wanted to revive the Paris brasserie by returning it to its original mission–good food at good prices served expeditiously in a comfortable lively setting.

So they carefully scouted a location and then spent a lot of time finding the producers who would supply their restaurant, including a farmer in the Aveyron who sends whole sides of Charolais beef to them in Paris and a fisherman in Ouistreham who delivers direct three times a week. Their poultry comes from the Bresse region, most of their vegetables are grown in the Ile de France, and their butter is made by the Laiterie de Kerguillet in Plouay in Brittany.

They were similarly exigent about the drinks served at their restaurant. The coffee they serve is roasted by Joris Pfaff, a prize-winning roaster, and their 100% malt unfiltered beer is made by the Rabourdin brewery in Courpalay in the Seine et Marne. Organic cider is delivered to the restaurant in kegs from the farm of Père Mahieu in Normandy, and the wine list was drawn up to showcase bottles from small independent producers and features a regularly changing selection of natural wines.

Arriving here for dinner on a hot summer night, Bruno and I were seated on the terrace to profit from a feeble breeze. Sipping Champagne and nibbling delicious truffled sausage from the Perigord while we read the menu, we fell into conversation with a jovial man sitting next to us who told us he lives in the neighborhood and comes several times a week. “The decor is a little bit Disney,” he said of the Brasserie Bellanger interior, “But the food is very good and the staff are lovely.”

The menu was an attractive roster of traditional French comfort food, but the prices were so low that I was instinctively apprehensive about the quality of what would follow. I was quite wrong, as it happily turned out, since our starters of oeufs mayonnaise, celeri remoulade and poireaux vinaigrette were excellent. The celeri remoulade was made with freshly grated celery rave, lightly dressed with real mayonnaise and appealingly garnished with crushed roasted hazelnuts, while the leeks were fresh and pleasantly al dente.

My main course of Lagioule sausage with potato puree garnished with chopped chives and salad for 13 Euros was deeply satisfying, and Bruno loved his summer tartare, which was ground beef with chopped olives, fried capers and green zebra tomatoes with a nice warm thatch of golden frites. Our chatty neighbor’s “poisson du jour” (fish of the day) was a nicely served filet of cod with grated zucchini and cherry tomatoes, too. Portions were generous, and the cooking here is light, fresh and precise.

We concluded our unexpectedly good meal here with a nicely made Paris Brest, and I decided this this would also be the occasion for me to take my first cat photo–the water pitcher on our table. Brasserie Bellanger is a very good bet for simple good-quality French food at very fair prices. N.B. It’s open daily for lunch and dinner and serves non-stop; they do not take reservations.

140 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, 10th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 07 82 32 92 08, but they do not take reservations. Metro: Barbès Rochechouart or Poissonnière. Open daily. www.victoretcharly.com
Average 20 Euros.

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Because 2019 is still so new, telling you the meal I had at Ibrik Kitchen the other night was one of the best I’ve had all year doesn’t deliver adequate praise for the excellent “neo-nostalgic” Romanian cooking of chefs Ovidio Malisevschi and Bogdan Alexandrescu a.k.a. Dexter chef (check out his Instagram feed: https://www.instagram.com/dexterchef/). So instead I’ll only say that this dinner was not only the best non-French meal I’ve had in Paris during the last twelve months, but one of the best ones full stop. In fact, this art-gallery-like little restaurant on a side street in the Sentier came as a delightful surprise in almost every way. And now when people ask me what ‘foreign’ kitchens I recommend eating during a trip to Paris, Romanian will now join the usual Israeli, Moroccan, Tunisian, Laotian and Vietnamese.

@Pierre Lucet Penato

This is because these two guys have found a way to serve up the cooking of their homeland that has a frankly brilliant gastronomic equilibrium between tradition and modernity. To wit, they’ve managed to make dishes like sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls) lighter and fresher without losing their authenticity, and they are also keenly attuned to the aesthetics of the Instagram era.

Further, this pair are a happy testament to one of the best things about eating in Paris today, which is that the city has never been more of a beacon for ambitious young gastronomic talents from all over the world. They come here, like Ovidio Malisevschi, to attend cooking school–the Cordon Bleu in his case, and then stay on to do a stage (apprenticeship) or two–he cooked with Frederic Simonin and at La Dame de Pic, Anne-Sophie Pic’s place in the rue du Louvre, before launching projects of their own.  For his part, Bogdan Alexandrescu, one of the best young chefs of his generation in Romania and a star of Master Chef Romania, is a native of Cluj, the beautiful city in northern Transylvania, and recently attended l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes du Goût in Paris.

@Pierre Lucet Penato

To be honest, on a rainy Tuesday night, I headed out to meet my friend Agathe for dinner at this new place with modest enthusiasm, because it just seemed so unlikely I’d find food anywhere near as good as the home cooking I enjoyed at several guest houses during a trip to Transylvania, one of the most beautiful destinations in Europe and a place with landscapes on par with those of such famously scenic places as Tuscany or the Loire Valley, last October. Why This type of sincere, hearty, rustic farm cooking almost invariably loses its character when it’s translated to a big-city setting in a foreign country. And memories of my very occasional meals at the other Romanian restaurant I know in Paris, a long-running place on the Left Bank that’s gone slightly senile, dampened my expectations, too. Still, Agathe’s father is Romanian, so she knows this cooking from vacation visits back to the handsome city of Brasov.

Just a few weeks after the holidays, my appetite was skittish, too, but my friend, who has recently moved to the lively young neighborhood with a lot of good restaurants that the Sentier (2nd Arrondissement) has become, insisted I’d be happily surprised. Sitting in the Metro, though, I found myself musing on my first experience of Eastern European cooking at the long-gone Cafe Barna, a Hungarian place in Westport, Connecticut, which served up a memorable annual Cub Scouts banquet of soggy dolma (stuffed grape leaves), alarmingly scarlet goulash and stuffed cabbage that was more like meat loaf draped with wilted cabbage leaves than the real McCoy. Still, it was quite a gust of gastronomic exoticism for me as a seven-year-old kid.

@Pierre Lucert Penato

Over an excellent glass of Slovenian white wine, we perused the menu, and I recognized some of the decorative totems of the dining room from travels in Romania, including a hairy mask from the Murmes region, the tell-tale heart shape decoration on a hand-forged wrought-iron coat rack–it’s a traditional motif in Hungarian speaking regions of Romania, and a couple of willow-switch fly swatters on the wall. Then we ordered from our charming waitress and were engrossed in conversation when our first courses arrived. Immediately I knew this would be a wonderful meal.

I’d ordered pastramă, the roasted Romanian brined beef known as pastrami in most English speaking countries, and it came to the table in a bell jar filled with fragrant fumes. When the smoke cleared, I found myself before a pretty little pile of sliced beef garnished with black Transylvanian truffle shavings. Served with excellent bread from Terroirs d’Avenir, the meat was succulent, gently brined and full of flavor. My friend’s starter–mămăligă cu smăntănă, or cornmeal porridge shaped into patties, then grilled and garnished tangy sour cream, was almost miraculously light and tasted pleasantly of toasted grain. Both dishes were winsomely impressive in terms of their presentation and the quality of the produce the chefs worked with (most beef served here comes from the celebrated Polmard butcher, dairy goods from Laiterie Les Fayes).

During dinner, I also talked about my recent trip to Transylvania, and how good the food had been. What’s been driving this transformation is tourism, and especially agro-turismo style rural guesthouses established in some of the region’s most beautiful villages, including Copsa Mare and Viscri. Much had changed since I’d first visited the region in 2012 to write this article for SAVEUR Magazine: https://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Eternal-Terrain But better still, most things hadn’t, including the small-scale traditional agriculture and the way so many people still grow and produce much of the food they eat themselves.

Our main courses were excellent, too, with a remarkable lightness and freshness continuing to be the signature of this kitchen. What I especially loved about my sarmale was that the cabbage leaves had been brined before being stuffed, which added a bracing tang of ferment to a dish that’s otherwise as gentle and consoling as a baby’s flannel blanket. The funky garnish of crumbled pork crackling was very welcome, too.

With a pronounced taste of green peppers, Agathe’s chicken goulash displayed the heterogeneity of the Romanian kitchen, which has been heavily influenced by Hungary, Austria, its Balkan neighbours, and most recently, Greece and other Mediterranean countries, especially Italy. The ethnic diversity of the country, which once had a large Jewish population and still has sizeable minorities of Hungarian speaking Szeklers, Moldovans, and Gypsies, is reflected in its cooking, too. In Transylvania, another local cooking tradition is that of the ‘Saxons,’ or German-speaking colonists from the Moselle valley, Luxembourg and the Rhineland who were invited to settle on what were then the lands of the Hungarian crown beginning in the 12th century. They arrived with their food ways, including a love of charcuterie and smoked meats and herbs like lovage and marjoram. When the Communist Ceaușescu regime collapsed in 1989, approximately half a million Saxons fled to a newly reunified Germany under the German nationality law known as Auslandsdeutsche, which offers citizenship to ethnic Germans wishing to repatriate to Germany.

“What makes this dish more Romanian than Hungarian is that it doesn’t include lashings of paprika and sour cream the way it might in Hungary. Instead, the vegetables–onions, tomatoes and peppers have been slowly stewed into almost a thick jam to which the chicken was then added to cook. This explains its succulence and richness,” Agathe observed. Served with  homemade potato puree, it was deeply satisfying, as was the organic Hungarian red wine from Sopron that we drank with this excellent meal.

While we ate our main courses, I had been eyeing the delicious looking beignets being shared by the couple at the table next to us. Called papanaș in Romanian, they’re filled with fromage blanc, garnished with jam or jelly, and they’re irresistible. Since we were lavishly well-fed, we decided to share a dessert, and since it was Agathe who had shared this discovery with me, I let her chose our sweet finale. “You have to try the pistachio cake,” she said, and a large slab of this dense, pudding-like cake filled with fruit and pistachios and topped with a simple sugar glaze and more pistachios arrived at the table. It was so good, I was almost tempted to order a piece to bring home, but caloric caution had me think the better of this indulging this yearning.

So the next time I come for a meal here, I already know what I’ll be having–whatever ciorba, or soup, is on the menu, the grilled trout, and an order of papanaș.

Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, an Ibrik is a small fluted metal pot with a long handle used to make Turkish coffee, which is very popular in certain parts of Romania, large swathes of which were once part of the Ottoman Empire.

9 rue de Mulhouse, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-70-69-42-50. Metro: Bonne Nouvelle. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Sunday for brunch and dinner. Closed Monday. Lunch menu 15 €, average a la carte meal 40 €  www.ibrik.fr 

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Astair is the newest address of a trio of the French capital’s most innovative restaurateurs–Jean Valfort, Charles Drouhaut and Jean-François Monfort. This team has real gift for delivering restaurants that hit a bull’s eye in terms of what Parisians want to eat right now (Canard et Champagne and Farago are theirs, too), but their signature talent is the sincere and polished hospitality they unfailingly deliver.

Settling in at this good looking dining room with a natty decor by interior designer Tristan Auer that includes terrazzo floors, ox-blood banquettes and bentwood chairs and an art-moderne style cocktail bar in the middle of the room, we immediately liked the lively and very Parisian atmosphere. Then our waiter, a Frenchman who’d lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for many years, was charming and very knowledgeable about the menu. This was a big help, too, since my mind was racing as I tried to decide what to order. Almost everything on the menu sounded appealing, but the real reason for my slightly frantic indecision was that it’s signed by one of my favorite French chefs, Gilles Goujon, who has three Michelin stars at his superb restaurant  L’Auberge du Vieux Puits in Fontjoncouse in the Aude.

Goujon is that increasingly rare chef in the higher echelons of French gastronomy today, or a cook whose pleasure and purpose is to work in his own kitchen day in and day out rather than build a franchised international empire. He’s as talented as he is modest and friendly, too, which I learned many years ago when I first went to his restaurant for lunch. I was writing something about the best restaurants in the Languedoc just after he’d won his third star in 2010.

Somehow or another, I completely miscalculated how long it would take for me to get to Fontjoncouse from Montpellier, and then I got lost on top of everything else. When I was already forty-five minutes late, I called to apologize and let them know that I was on my way. “No problem at all!” said the man who answered the phone. “Drive carefully, and we’ll see you soon.” It was 1.45pm when I arrived at the restaurant, where the serving hours are normally noon to 1.30pm.

“Welcome!” said Goujon when he came to the table himself with the menu.

Flustered and still flapping, I apologized profusely and suggested that maybe I should just have a single dish, since I’d arrived so late.

“Stop! Please, stop! You are welcome here, and it will be my pleasure to cook for you! No one’s in a hurry today. So take off your watch and put it in your pocket, or you’ll ruin your lunch!” He had no idea that I was a journalist either, in case you’re wondering.

Matted against such kindness, the meal that followed was superb. A coddled egg came with fine slices of black truffle and a thrillingly feral puree of the tuber, plus a warm brioche to mop it all up with. Next, a nacreous rouget filet sat on top of a potato filled with brande de morue surrounded with steamed shellfish and a lashing of saffron rouille; this was one of the best fish dishes I’ve ever eaten, and I’m still yearning to return to Fontjoncouse and eat it again eight years later. That, and a rack of roasted cochon noir pork with a potato puree with boudin and a jus that include the fleshy green Lucques olives from the Languedoc.

When I finally left around 4.30pm, I got sort of teary with gratitude as I unwittingly headed for an entirely different experience, which was an evening alone in a hotel room with a water bed and mirrored walls and ceiling in Gruissan Plage. Needless to say, I wasn’t the one who chose this hotel.

So we settled on two starters signed by Goujon, linguine with squid’s ink and a ragout of squid cooked with cardamom for me and a coddled egg with wild mushrooms and brioche for Bruno.

If both of these dishes were excellent, the subtle flavor of the cardamom in the creamy squid ragout and the way it married with the the perfectly al dente pasta made this one spectacular. Other available starters were resolutely French, including oysters, escargots and frog’s legs.

Though the lamb shank with eggplant, pickled lemons, tomatoes and North African spices is usually served for two, they kindly made an exception for me, and I loved the way the differing tones of acidity in the lemon and tomato cut the richness of the fork-tender meat, while the aubergine soaked up its luscious cooking juices.

Bruno opted for the Bulinade de la Côte Vermeille, another Goujon dish and a ruddy fish soup of filled with mussels, cuttlefish, monkfish cockles and sliced potatoes. “What makes it different from a bouillabaisse is that it tastes like there’s some lard (bacon) in the sauce, and it has stronger flavors of pepper, probably Piment d’Espelette, and garlic than a bouillabaisse does. It’s delicious, but I wish it came with some croutons to mop up the soup a little bit more,” he said.

Rather embarrassingly, I guess I’d stared so hard at our neighbor’s roasted quail with grapes and figs that she asked me if I’d like to try some, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I allowed pure desire to override the ancient curse of my self-deprecating good manners. “Yes, please, if you don’t mind, just a little piece,” I said. It was a good call on my part, too, since the bird was juicy and gently gamey and the resinous flavors in the hot fruit flattered it perfectly.

Though portions here are hefty, sheer gluttony had us finishing up with a very good fruit-garnished baba au rhum for me and an excellent fig tart for Bruno that vanished before I’d even thought to photograph it.

Beyond the dishes by Gilles Goujon, the menu also offers sole meunière, calf’s liver deglazed with vinegar, grilled sole and cote de boeuf–either Charolais or Salers, for two. What’s interesting here, too, is the way that menu shows off how the gastronomic boundaries of the brasserie are being revised for the 21st century–now many brasseries are offering simmered dishes that were once more often found in bistros alongside such brasserie standards as grilled fish and meat. “Young Parisians have fallen in love with the urban glamour of the brasserie–their liveliness and brisk service, but they don’t necessarily want to eat choucroute garni like their parents did. This is why we asked Gilles Goujon to work with us at Astair–we wanted to create an offer that’s more gourmand,” explained Jean Valfort.

They certainly succeeded, which is why Astair is one of the very best of the new brasseries that are so successfully rebooting this much loved Metropolitan idiom.

Astair, 19 Passage des Panoramas, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33)09.81.29.50.95. Metro: Richelieu-Drouot. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Lunch menus 15 Euros, 20 Euros, 25 Euros, Average a la carte 65 Euros. www.astair.paris

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When friends recently suggested meeting for Sunday dinner at Le Petit Lutetia, I looked forward to going as much for their company and a good dose of nostalgia as anything else. For the eleven years I spent living in two different Left Bank apartments–one in the rue Monsieur, the second in the rue du Bac, I lived within walking distance of this nice old neighborhood brasserie in the rue de Sevres.

I didn’t go very often, though, because the food was, as the French would say, correcte, or acceptable, but rarely better than that. They did have an oyster stand out front for a longtime, though, and the confit de canard (duck preserved in its own fat and then grilled golden and crispy) was a good meal on a cold night, especially when it came with duck-fat sautéed Sardalais potatoes with a generously sprinkling of chopped garlic and parsley.

The prices were affordable, and it was nice to know that it was there for those nights when I got home late from work and had an empty fridge, or I just wanted a quick bite with a friend without leaving the neighborhood. The waiters in long white aprons were polite, and the art-nouveau dining room itself had handsome stencilled tile floors. Upfront and just inside the door, the bar was separated from the rest of the space by beveled glass partions, the lighting was low and amber, and murky but pretty oil paintings framed in dark molding on the walls gave the place some character. To wit, Le Petit Lutetia was a useful if unremarkable neighborhood place that just ticked along uneventfully from one year to the next.

And like all neighborhood restaurants, this was one with which I had a long skein of memories, some happy–a first date that became a second one very quickly, a tete a tete with a new friend after a movie on a rainy night, and others sad–a break-up dinner that didn’t last until dessert and a final excruciating meal with a visiting relative who shall remain unnamed after we’d just spent four days together in Istanbul that had left my nerves completely macramed.

As we approached the restaurant the other night, however, I was surprised to see a framed notice on a stanchion indicating that they now had a voiturier, or car-parking service. This struck me as odd, because most of the people who dined here came by foot.

Inside, the nice older man with gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses who ran the dining room for many years was no long there, but this came as no surprise. My guess was that he’d retired, and I hope he’d was off somewhere in the Pyrenees fishing for trout or in his home wood-working shop in the Limousin, or something like that. Aside from the absence of the oyster stand out front, however, nothing else seemed to have changed, although I did notice that the waiters were much younger than they’d once been and also that the dining room was busier than I’d expected it might be on a rainy night.

As I slid in on the banquette, it was just as broken-bottomed as it was when I last been here, oh what, maybe twelve years ago. But then I noticed patissier Pierre Herme sitting at a table a few down from us, and further along, a well-known decorator having a dinner with a friend. So even before I opened the menu, I knew something had changed here, since Le Petit Lutetia was most definitely not a place to attract those who assiduously cultivate the public eye back in the days when I was an occasional customer.

And indeed something had changed: the menu, which was considerably more expensive and also rather more interesting than it had once been, with modish to boring dishes like smoked salmon with blinis and creme fraiche, red tuna tartare; a 28 Euros salad of lettuce, avocado and King Crab (the menu specifies, ‘beaucoup de crabe,’ mais quand-meme!), and, perhaps as a sop to the well-bred and habitually parsimonious grandmothers who invite their grandchildren here for dinner, a simple vegetable soup for 8 Euros.

Oh, well, what the hell, even it was absurdly expensive, I feel like some smoked salmon tonight, I thought to myself, and after that, I’ll have the confit de canard for old times’ sake. Bruno went all fish with the tuna tartare and grilled salmon, Carole sank for the soup and then smoked salmon (diet), and Laurent the tuna tartare and then the veal chop with mushrooms, a head-splitting 40 something Euros. Deputised to order the wine, I was fiddling with the list when our bearded waiter arrived, and then it struck me. In a flash, I was certain this place had been taken over by one or more of the Costes brothers. So I asked, and he seemed oddly reluctant to answer my question.
“Very little has changed here since the new owner took over,” he said, somewhat evasively.
So I persisted. Was Le Petit Lutetia now owned by one or more of the Costes brothers?
“Why do you need to know#8221; he said with a stiff smile.
“I’m a very curious kind of guy, that’s all, Sir,” I replied.
“M’oui, Jean-Louis Costes,” he said and scurried away without taking our wine order.

My heart sank, because I just don’t do Costes restaurants. For me, their style of restaurant keeping has done serious damage to Paris by privileging atmosphere and casting–both in terms of dining-room personnel and clientele, i.e. only the rich, famous and/or beautiful need apply, over good food. And the snideness of the service at many of the restaurants they run–Georges on the top of the Centre Pompidou, La Societe in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, L’Avenue on the Avenue Montaigne, and Le Cafe Marly at the Louvre, among other addresses, led me to swear them off many years ago.

Now I understood the sprinkling of recognisable faces in the dining room, the stratospheric prices, and the menu of food for people who are more interested in going to restaurants for social reasons than gastronomic ones. Oh, well, all I could do was hope for the best, which aside from a previous wound to the wallet, was more or less exactly what happened.

My starter of smoked salmon was so generously served it could easily have been a main course–and so it should have been for the price, and its quality was excellent. Bruno and Laurent loved their tuna tartare–nice plump chunks of good quality fish on a bed of mashed avocado with a little cilantro and a bit of chopped scallion, and despite its rather sad pale army-green split-pea color, Carole was content with her soup.

And then our main courses arrived. Was this food excellent or memorable No, but it was correct at a higher level of correctness than the old Le Petit Lutetia once was, and in terms of what this patch of the Left Bank has become today, this seems to suffice for most of its clients, many of whom appeared to be regulars.

But as I tucked into my confit de canard, I couldn’t help but feeling wistful for the inhabitants of the old stables building at the head of the courtyard at 134 rue du Bac, my last Left Bank address. In this odd-bod building, there was a middle-aged lady who was a sales woman at a luxury boutique in Paris and the mistress of a married minister in the French cabinet, a rather deranged American poetess who was no shyer about populating her bed with eager and likely candidates night after night than I was, the widow of a French ambassador to an African country who lived among the collection of arts and objects this life had yielded, a mean old drunk who worked for a bank on the ground floor, a delightful and incredibly talented French-Argentine couple–he, an architect, she, an amazingly talented painter, who lived across the hall from me, and who cheated on each other in such epic ways that they finally flew apart, and, well, me. You see, this curious laundry bag of people was what once made the Left Bank so wonderful. And it’s now pretty much gone, since the same urban story has played out here that has played out in other wonderful funky urban neighbourhoods I once inhabited, Earl’s Court in London and Greenwich Village in New York City. Why None of the inhabitants of the flats in the old stables could afford to live there today, and the complexion of the neighbourhood has changed so thoroughly, that many of the well-heeled newcomers who’ve replaced them would surely look down their noses at neighbours who don’t have the money they do.

So as obvious as it may seem to say so, a ‘neighborhood’ restaurant will always be a reflection of who lives there, and as the great threshing out of the Western world’s major cities continues and even accelerates, places like the Le Petit Lutetia I once knew, or a flock of ordinary West Village restaurants with straggly spider plants in their windows and better than decent cheeseburgers and meatloaf to accompany really well-made Martinis have vanished for ever. Alas. But Bruno’s marinated salmon (soy sauce, mirin, etc.) was very good, as was Laurent’s cote de veau. And I liked my confit de canard, which was just fine, but pleased me more than anything else because it’s a dish you so rarely see on a restaurant menus in Paris anymore. That said, the potato garnish was heat-lamp dried out and not only lacking the duck fat that would have given them flavor but the coarse hash of raw garlic and parsley that has always titillated me, a garlic fiend from birth.

Carole finished up with an Ile Fottante, but the gents abstained from dessert, because we were well fed and quietly wary of the bill. As we sipped our post-prandial coffees, I found myself wondering, would I come back here again. Well, not as a destination restaurant, but forewarned that it would be thumpingly expensive and eager to show some visiting jet-lagged friends what Paris is all about, yes, I’d come back. But with these conditions occurring rather rarely, and so many of my visiting friends obviously arriving on a quest for seriously good and interesting food, I rather doubt that my face will grace this door again for another ten years or so.

Before heading home, I headed for the men’s room, where the glazed ceramic plaque of a little hobo made me think that the last time I’d been here was yesterday.

107 rue de Sèvres, 6th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-45-48-33-53. Metro: Vaneau or Duroc, Average 60-90 € Open daily from noon to midnight.

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Gastronomic entrepreneur Alain Ducasse’s new version of his restaurant Spoon (the original  closed after a long run just off the Champs Elysees several years ago) is called  Spoon 2. It occupies the former premises of one of Yannick Alleno’s Terroir Parisien restaurants in the Palais Brogniart, the old Paris stock-market building in the heart of the city, which were redesigned in a curiously nondescript way by the otherwise tremendously elegant interior architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte .

I ate here a week ago, and I am still trying to make sense of the experience. Suffice it to say that Alain Ducasse could never do a bad restaurant–he’s much too talented and savvy for that. But I just can’t find the modus vivendi–gastronomic or economic, for this place. Supposedly, it’s about showcasing the remarkable foods and dishes Ducasse has recently discovered during his incessant travels. But the first dish that came to the table, “shrimp cake, katsuboshi,” identified as being from Taiwan on the menu, is a delicious Cantonese classic that was on the take-out menu of the excellent Cantonese Chinese restaurant in the town where I grew up in Connecticut as “Shrimp Toast.” The only thing that made it different at Spoon 2, were the bonito flakes, which were oddly lacking in flavor.

It’s still very good at Spoon 2, though, but hardly a revelation, and neither was the Thai salad of green papaya (fiery but otherwise more a study in texture than taste), the three variously garnished raw fish dishes, or the two in the menu category dubbed “Vapeurs,” because good quality shumai, or shrimp dumplings, and pork-and-cabbage wontons can be found all over Paris and also purchased at Picard, the popular local frozen food chain of respectable quality.

Just before we became completely bewildered by this place–I mean why would I come to Alain Ducasse for straight up Cantonese, Thai, Peruvian or other cuisines when I can go to the source elsewhere in Paris, a very clever dish arrived. Crunchy golden beignets filled with chilli sin carne (meat-free chilli, or chilli made just with beans) arrived at the table in a molded cast-iron baking dish with salsa verde and peppery tomato sauce, and they were an urbane and witty riff on a Mexican comfort-food classic.

With his knowledge, talent, and imagination, this sort of nimble, even occasionally wry, culinary reflection is what I came to Spoon 2 expecting from Ducasse, since he is one of the world’s most assiduous catalogers of tastes, produce and recipes. The first Spoon, Food and Wine, later shortened to just Spoon, spun on just such an axis of disruptive innovation, reflection and imagination, which is what made it so original when it opened in 1998 (the fact that the original wine list was almost exclusively American was a real brickbat to Gallic sensibilities, too).

So the meal sort of ambled along, pleasantly enough, but sort of off-kilter, like those odd Air France advertisements that feature French women dressed in the stereotypical costume of various different countries, a monumental marketing wrong-foot that conveys a comic-strip version of other countries and cultures.

Spoon 2 doesn’t play to such teeth-grinding cliches, but on the other hand the pale pink ‘red’ Thai curry served in a Portuguese cataplana dish was again a mystery to me. Before being brightened by a squirt of lime, its sole flavors were the quiet heat of bird’s eye peppers and, um, coconut milk. Other main course options were similarly timid postcards from mid-eighties vacations, including a Japanese dish of beef with green chillis, skewered Japanese style sea scallops with a garnish of lemon and wakame, chicken Tandoori, and cod cooked in coconut milk with mango.

Happily, Ducasse’s acute skills as a sort of swashbuckling gastronomic buccaneer reappeared brilliantly with our desserts. Identified as Brazilian, a dish of fresh and burned mango with an avocado-and-coriander hash was a thrilling high-wire act performance between sweet and savoury that was light, original and intensely refreshing. Similarly, a Ducasse’s riff on a pastille au lait (flakey layers of pastry in a milk custard), a Moroccan classic, was fragile, fresh and even elegant.

It was when I noticed two other desserts I’d forgotten on the restaurant’s website, that I finally figured out what this place is all about. The Key Lime pie and Iced Bounty Bar desserts let the cat out of the bag. Spoon 2 is Ducasse’s first full-fledged attempt to seduce millennials, who have very different gastronomic compass points than me or the chef himself.

With this in mind, it will be very interesting to see how this place plays out. For my part, though, I hope that upcoming menus will feature a larger number of truly astonishing, never-seen-or-tasted-before dishes from the Marco Polo of French gastronomy.

Enamelled water cup at Spoon 2 @Alexander Lobrano

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Juste, a stylish raw bar and seafood takeaway place just down the street from the exquisite neo-classical church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette in the 9th Arrondissement, is an address we’ve been meaning to try for a longtime. This is because we both love oysters and liked the idea of a place that offered them outside the usual local context of mostly mediocre brasseries or the expensive fish restaurants.

So when a certain jet-lag induced inertia meant that our larder was still pretty much bare the second night after we’d returned from vacation last week, we called to make sure they were open, and then walked down the pleasantly quiet rue de Châteaudun–normally its a polluted, traffic-choked mess of street that begs the question of why the city of Paris, purportedly so green, doesn’t heal this artery by planting it with trees, to Juste.

Since I’ve told Bruno the story of how I ate my first oyster too many times for him to hear it again, I kept it to myself, but suffice it to say that some thirty years ago during a truant getaway to Cabourg in Normandy, an insistent Frenchman with eyes the same dark green color as the waters of the English Channel cornered me into giving the bivalves a chance.

We’d gone for a long walk on the beach on a beautiful Indian summer day, a pleasure enhanced by the fact we’d both taken sick days in the fullest flush of good health, when we rounded a bend and much to my horror, I saw a sea shack with folding chairs on a little bluff overlooking the dunes. “I bet they’ll have some oysters,” said Marc, and I feared they might, since ever since an unhappy encounter or two with same many years ago in New Orleans, I’d given them a wide berth. Why I thought I didn’t like their slipperiness, strange texture and unappealing gray appearance.

Despite my protestations that I wasn’t even the least bit hungry–it was only 11am, Marc headed off to the sea shack and waved to me to follow. When I did, I arrived just in time to see him slurping a freshly shucked oyster from its shell. He held one out to me.

“I can’t eat oysters,” I said. ‘For religious reasons.”

“I thought you were a Protestant#8221;

“I am, but I’m a Congregationalist, and Congregationalists should never eat oysters.”

“Oh,” said Marc. “I think I can fix that.” He dipped an index finger in his glass of Muscadet, crossed himself, muttered something, made a moist mark on my forehead, and said, “I’ve made you a Catholic for as long as is necessary for you to eat some of these excellent Norman oysters.”

So I took a swig of wine, slurped an oyster and swallowed it whole. Truth be told, I loved the taste of the sea the little critter left in its wake. “Now, you’ll actually taste one,” Marc insisted, holding out another one. “Just bite it gently once or twice.” Reluctantly, I did, and in that bolt of iodine-richness, a head-spinning passion was born, one that’s never left me and never will. And this gift of oysters was one of the best anyone’s ever made me during my whole life.

Arriving on a warm night, Juste was a relaxed, friendly place, and all of the picnic tables outside were full, so we snagged a first-come, first-serve table by the door with a built-in metal bucket for the empty shells our meal would generate. We also inspected the short but appealing menu, which includes Thaëron oysters from Riec-sur-Belon (the spats are hatched in the waters off Arcachon in the southwest, then the baby oysters are raised near Morlaix in northern Brittany, and finally they’re finished in a bay on the same province’s southern coast).

There was also a lot of other fresh seafood on display, to be cooked and consumed on the premises or for takeaway, including clams, cockles, crab claws, mussels, and other sea treats, plus a big bubbling lobster tank by the counter where you place your order.

So we ordered a dozen on the smaller oysters, and six of the larger ones to start, along with an excellent and very reasonably priced 50cl carafe of white wine from the Domaine de Gournier in Sainte-Anastasie, a village that’s about five minutes from our new house outside of Uzes. I think I just found our house white….

The gorgeous firm oysters were served with good bread and seaweed-flecked butter, and were a revivifying treat, especially during that period of drudgery that follows a vacation, a time of re-accustoming yourself to stress and busyness again and catching up on all those dreary things–bills, taxes, etc., you’d just let go of long enough to have a real vacation.

Then, because we were still hungry that night, we ordered some baby clams in garlic cream sauce and some grilled razor-shell clams, and the freshness of this seafood was exemplary. It was perfectly cooked, too, and the dining room, filled with a mix of office employees who’d ditched their ties and jackets, local residents and tourists, had that nice low-key thrum that fills a room when people are eating well without making too much of a fuss about it. That, you see, is the point of Juste–you come here on the spur of the moment–they don’t take reservations, for some really good, simply cooked (or not cooked) reasonably priced seafood.

Curiosity, and my huge love of seaweed, prompted us to order a side salad of chickpeas, chopped orange, green onions and samphire, that crunchy Breton seaweed I buy whenever I see it in the market, because it makes a terrific garnish for risotto, pasta or grilled meat or fish. The chickpeas were cooked perfectly al dente and the seasoning of this salad was beautifully balanced.

While sharing a baked apple with a lashing of caramel sauce and some creme fraiche, I thought about how Juste is a perfect, sincere, friendly expression of the way Parisians want to eat in their own neighborhoods these days. What we want is really good casual dining with pedigreed produce, affordable prices, friendly service, and a total absence of fussiness or pretention. This is what Juste delivers, and I know I’ll be going there often this Fall.

Juste, 48 rue Laffitte, 9th Arrondissement, Paris, Tél. (33) 09 82 33 93 47. Metro: Notre-Dame-de-Lorette or Chausee d’Antin La Fayette. Open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner. Monday lunch only. Closed Sunday. Average a la carte 30 €.

http://juste-producteur.com/restaurant/  https://www.facebook.com/RestaurantJUSTE/?fref=ts

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With a striking redesign by British designer Tom Dixon and a tempting new menu by three-star chef Eric Frechon, the legendary Le Drugstore at the top of the Champs-Élysées once again offers a good reason to stroll up the most famous avenue in Paris.

This is good news, too, since with one or two exceptions, the Champs-Élysées has long been a gastronomic wasteland from one end to the other. A case in point: the Pizza Pino restaurant where I ate my first meal in Paris in 1972 is still there, and still serving the same sad pizzas, including those with sunny-side up eggs that made us laugh out loud when we saw them. These were what we we ate on the hot August night my father overruled the reservation my mother had made at La Tour d’Argent.

My two brothers and I had been traveling on our own for over six wonderful weeks (Rome, Pompeii, Perugia, Florence, Sienna, Venice, Vienna, Switzerland, a cruise on the Rhine) when we met my father and sister, who’d just flown in from New York, at a hotel in the rue Marignan. The reunion was fraught in a variety of ways, which is why we ended up at Pizza Pino instead of La Tour d’Argent (my father thought it would be a waste of money to take children to such an expensive restaurant; my mother, who had decided to spend an unexpected inheritance in an uncharacteristic act of well-moderated extravagance, wanted us to enjoy the views of Notre Dame by night and have an experience of real French haute cuisine). The saving grace of Pizza Pino, however, were those egg garnishes, which brought the relief of mirth to a table of people who hailed from one of the world’s great pizza belts, coastal Connecticut from Norwalk to New Haven. I mean, who in their right mind would put an egg on a pizza?!?! Clams, mushrooms, sausage, bacon (oh, bacon!), meatballs, yes, but an egg?

Le Drugstore originally opened in 1958 when French advertising maestro Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, founder of the Publicis agency, returned to Paris after a stint working on Madison Avenue in its “Mad Men” heyday as the center of the advertising industry in the United States. Impressed by the 24/7 life of New York City, Bleustein-Blanchet decided to create a multi-faceted address that would cater to a full-spectrum of consumer self-indulgence on what was then one of the world’s most storied boulevards, the Champs-Élysées. So Le Drugstore became a pulse-point where you get everything from a bottle of Champagne to the latest records, along with a well-made Martini and a then decidedly exotic bite to eat like a cheeseburger, since the restaurant’s D.N.A. was always avowedly American, a reflection of an era when post-war America exemplified modernity and technological innovation.

The concept was a huge hit, and there were once two other Drugstores in Paris, one in Saint-Germain-des-Prés across the street from the Cafe des Deux Magots on the boulevard Saint Germain, and the other at the Rond Point des Champs-Élysées. They thrived during the sixties, seventies and into the early eighties, when Paris nightlife guttered out, never to really recover again. To the horror of local residents, the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Le Drugstore became an Emporio Armani some twenty years ago, and then the one at the Rond Point des Champs-Élysées went belly up, too.

Le Drugstore @ Yann Deret

If the Champs Élysées Le Drugstore survived, it was mainly due to tourist traffic, because Parisians themselves became disaffected with the avenue a longtime ago. Recently, there have been several attempts made to revive Le Drugstore, including an unfortunate Frank Gehry like renovation of the building by Michele Saee in 2004, which happened at the same time that Alain Ducasse was brought in to reboot the restaurant. Neither Saee’s redesign, nor the Ducasse concept went over very well, so fast forward to the new makeover.

What Dixon instinctively understood was that architect Pierre Dufau’s original design should be the compass for his renovation, since its mid-century mannerisms have become stylish all over again. To this end, Dixon used rich materials like marble and brass and sensual ones like glove leather to channel the once giddy glamour of the original design, albeit seen with the bemused but respectful critical distance of sixty years.

Le Drugstore – the bar @Yann Deret

Staying true to Le Drugstore’s original vocation of spontaneity, there are a variety of settings in which to eat and drink here, from a sidewalk terrace, to a glamorous bar, leather banquettes, wing chairs at tables, and more conventional sit-up-straight tables with chairs. You can also sit on stool at a white-marble counter and watch the action in the open kitchen.

Le Drugstore – Finger Food @Nathalie Carnet

Chef Eric Frechon’s job was to create a menu would read as sophisticated modern comfort food to both Parisians and the international foot traffic the Champs-Elysées attracts most heavily from April to October. This meant offering an array of foods that would also respect a detailed variety of dietary restrictions, both religious and medical, and proposing dishes that instantly read as pleasure to several dozen different nationalities.  Oh, and the owners also wanted a wink or two at Le Drugstore’s original ground-breaking American influenced menu. Faced with a tall order, Frechon pulled it off rather brilliantly.

Le Drugstore – Beef tartare @Nathalie Carnet

Stopping by for dinner recently, I knew we’d be in for some fun when I first eyeballed Dixon’s striking dining room, spotted a whole section on Frechon’s menu entitled ‘finger food,’ and surveyed the dining room. Here, a pair of Russian blondes with the animation brought on by Andean snow were flirting with the good-looking Lebanese brothers at the table next to them, there three Japanese women were intently examining one another’s brand new Louis Vuitton handbags, and everywhere else, dozens of interesting, poignant and often amusing cameo performances were taking place with a similarly international cast.

To accompany well-mixed cocktails, we started with some corn tempura with tandoori salt and accras (deep-fried) beignets of salt cod and tiny gray prawns served with aioli sauce. The nibbles were delicious, and it immediately struck me that the food here was now good enough and interesting enough again to tempt Parisians back to a place most hadn’t set foot in for years.

Roasted cauliflower meuniere with curry oil @Nathalie Carnet

Next, we skated by the section of dishes that are available all day, including cheeseburgers, croque Monsieurs, and Cesar salads, to the main menu, which is divided between sections entitled “Le Cru” (The Raw) and Le Cuit (The Cooked). This may sound gimmicky but isn’t, since raw means modishly popular tartares, carpaccios and salads, while cooked ranges from roasted cauliflower with curry oil to grilled red tuna marinated with citrus and ginger. Again, the short take here is seriously well-made international comfort food.

I started with a beautifully composed salad of fresh blue crab, avocado, pink grapefruit, green apple, tomato and butter lettuce in a honey vinaigrette, and Bruno chose the beef carpaccio, which came garnished with a tangle of finely grated daikon, spring onions, coriander and a soy vinaigrette. Both dishes were well-sourced, attractively plated contemporary cosmopolitan classics.

If my main course–a shrimp burger with green onions, coriander and ginger, was rather underwhelming–the ‘burger’ was too small, the ratio between shrimp and bread crumb was off, and the bun it road too sweet, Bruno was very happy with his cod. Steamed and then lightly seared, it was sprinkled with plankton powder, the super food du jour in Paris right now, and briny samphire seaweed, a crunchy iodine-rich sea vegetable that’s a natural pairing with Atlantic fish. A scattering of shell-like gnocchi surrounded the fish and were accented with a gentle garlic foam.

Notable among other choices here is the Japanese Wagyu beef, a sirloin for two that goes for a spritely 195 Euros.

Pineapple carpaccio @Nathalie Carnet

Desserts are excellent at Le Drugstore, and so they should be, since they’re an important part of the culinary bait here. To wit, the whole point of this place is to walk through the door off the cuff and decide to eat and drink something that spoils you. This might mean a pineapple carpaccio flamed with aged rum or a nice raspberry financier with passionfruit sorbet.

So Le Drugstore is what I would call a successful situational restaurant, or a place that’s very handy should you find yourself in this part of Paris and wanting a meal outside normal meal times, or a comfortable place to dine on your own, or an address that’s open on Saturday, Sunday and every other day of the year but which is worth going to for reasons beyond that convenience.

Framed another way, Le Drugstore is a good new incarnation of the emerging new-style 21st century Parisian brasserie and a lot of fun to boot.

133 avenue des Champs-Elysées, 8th Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-44-43-79-00.
Métro: Charles de Gaulle-Etoile or George V. Open daily: Monday – Friday 8am-2am; Saturday, Sunday and holidays, 10am-2am. Average 45 Euros. https://restaurantledrugstore.com/en/ledrugstore

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