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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Though the TripAdvisor reviews may not yet reflect it, Le Vaudeville, one of the most legendary brasseries in Paris, is back. Following a sensitive renovation by new owners the Groupe Bertrand, it’s much better than it’s been for a longtime. To be sure, it’s not a place one heads to in search of gastronomic revelation, but rather for a good simple French meal when everything else is closed, it’s late, or you just want a meal in a pretty lively room without making a lot of fuss about the food. That’s what brasseries have always been about in Paris, a straightforward and expeditious feed with a good dose of Metropolitan glamour to boot.

I have a long history with this restaurant, since it was the site of my first-ever meal with newly made friends when I moved to Paris over thirty years ago. I still remember the Friday afternoon in the rue Cambon offices of Fairchild Publications where I was working as an editor when I sidled over to the one person who’d been friendly to me during my first month in town and asked if she’d like to have dinner that weekend. “Sure,” she said–a vast relief to me, “And I’ll bring my husband, Peter.”

So we met there on a rainy Saturday night, and ate a mountain of oysters, followed by steaks for the gents and the  grilled cod with mashed potatoes that’s still on the menu for Anne. Aided by a flood of white wine, it was a hilarious evening during which we discovered we had a lot in common in terms of everything from food likes to our politics and senses of humour. And so an enduring friendship was born.

As a newcomer to Paris, I also loved the louche buzz in the room, and its beautiful art-deco decor, which dates to its rebuilding by Solvet Père et Fils, the same architects who designed another famous Parisian brasserie, La Coupole, after the original cafe on this site across the street from La Bourse, the old French stockmarket, had been destroyed by a German air-raid during World War I.

And so through the years I ended up here rather often. For a big tray of oysters with a new lover, for a small tray of oysters when a lover left me, with friends after a movie, with my mother when I hoped that the animated room might arm me against her exasperating remarks, and with almost every Parisian friend I’ve ever had when we decided to have dinner at the last minute and hadn’t made a reservation anywhere else. The food was, as the French would say, “correcte,” or reliably adequate, until this restaurant followed all of the other ones that were once part of the now defunct Brasserie Flo chain, and became mediocre at best and expensive for what it was.

The charm of a meal here well and truly dented, I stopped going, except for the occasional oyster feast with Bruno, but even then, we preferred to take our oysters home with us from the shellfish stand out front rather than be seated in the dining room.

Now, happily, this place has had a corporate reset. Respecting the restaurant’s DNA, the Groupe Bertrand has given it a needed freshening up, which has included a terrific new terrace and an excellent new bar program that features light eats with a glass of wine or a cocktail.

You may be wondering how I ended up here again. Well, suffice to say that I try very hard not to be a food tyrant, which means being a bully when it comes to where we eat. Yes, as a Paris food writer I often have a list of new places I want to try that’s as long as my arm, but I find it keeps the peace in my couple, and is also actually rather useful, when I let someone else decide where we’ll have dinner.

So when I returned home from a recent trip to Spain on a Sunday night, Bruno mentioned that he’d walked by Le Vaudeville and that it was looking wonderful after a freshening up. “Maybe it’s good again,” he said, hopefully. Stealthily, I did a little research on the internet, which is how I learned it had new owners. “Sure, let’s give it a try,” I told him, and off we went.

A charming young maitre d’ greeted us when we arrived, but I still recognised several of the hard-working long-serving waiters from days of yore and hoped they were being well-treated by the new management. Hungry, we settled in on the terrace and shared a flight of excellent hors d’oeuvres, including charcuterie, onion rings, and accras (salt-cod fritters), with a flute of Champagne, because, well, because.

Next, we tucked into a tower of impeccably fresh langoustines–when they’re fresh, their tails remain in a rigid curl rather than being flacid, and, because I am a child of suburban American steakhouses and was surprised to see it on the menu, an avocado-and-prawn cocktail in a sauce Marie Rose (mayonnaise with ketchup or tomato paste). Though it hardly rivalled my favorite version of this dish, which is served at chef Michael Lomonaco’s Porter House in New York City, it was perfectly pleasant. Other possible starters included onion soups, escargots, sea bream tartare, and fried smelt with tartare sauce.

Though tempted by the butter-roasted lobster at a reasonable 29.50 Euros, I had a filet of beef with Béarnaise sauce for my main–a nice piece of meat, perfectly cooked and with a very respectable Béarnaise that was also good for dipping frites into, and Bruno chose grilled sole with haricots vert. Among other options, it was nice to see a choucroute garni on the menu here, and salmon tartare as a main course would be a good choice for summer dining or light eating.

In the past, I never ordered dessert at Le Vaudeville, because they were eminently forgettable and never very good. But the ‘Angelina’ pedigree of the millefeuille tempted me, while the sagely more calorie-conservative Bruno went with a dainty, airy toasted-almond topped ile flottante napped in light caramel and a sauce Anglaise. Both were good, and walking home after dinner, I was happy that a restaurant which is such a repository of happy memories is once again a place where I might be happy going for an off-the-cuff meal with no hesitation.

I was also glad that the beautiful etched glass art-deco door to the men’s room downstairs had survived the renovation.

Le Vaudeville, 29 rue Vivienne, 2nd Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-40-20-04-62. Metro: Bourse. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Average 40 Euros. http://www.vaudevilleparis.com/en/

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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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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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Swordfish carpaccio with zucchini, raspberries and dill

Almost no adjective in a restaurant review makes me warier than the word ‘fun,’ because overtly ‘good-times’ type places often don’t take their food very seriously and attempt to hide this culinary weakness with loud music, low lighting and amped up cocktail menus. That said, I’ll cock a snook at myself and come right out with it: Daroco is probably more fun than any other new restaurant in Paris this summer. Why?

It occupies a beautiful space with a locally legendary fashion pedigree, i.e., the former Jean-Paul Gaultier boutique in the rue Vivienne. It also has an eye-catching off-beat vaguely tongue-in-cheek Miami-moves-to-Soho decor of high-backed royal blue velvet booths, white terrazzo floors (someday, somewhere, I’d love to live in a place with terrazzo floors, partly because it’s pretty and feels so good barefoot and partly so that I can channel the weekend invitation I foolishly turned down to Gore Vidal’s villa on the Amalfi coast a good twenty-five years ago when people were still trying to get me out of my Fruit of the Looms), and exposed brick walls. The most important part of the decor, however, are the good looking clearly carefully cast servers in striped Saint James sailor’s pullovers, a Gaultier signature, and the crowd itself, because this place has so quickly become the nexus the Parisian tribes that work in businesses which are mostly visual–photographers, fashion designers, web designers, advertising and PR types, plus a few lumbering folks from the ever diminished world of words and a gaggle of retailers, buyers and other professional trend spotters.

This restaurant is the latest creation of savvy restauranteurs Alexandre Giesbert and Julien Ross (Roco, Roca and Rococo), and it scores a bull’s eye in terms of what Parisians want to eat this summer, which is uncomplicated good quality Italian cooking. Think a short produce-driven menu that debuts with simple well-sourced, crowd-pleasing Instagram ready starters like swordfish carpaccio with zucchini, raspberries and dill or bosomy lactic burrata topped with toasted pine nuts and dribbled with pesto oil. The only starter that disappoints is their rendition of vitello tonnato, overcooked slices of veal with a nearly tasteless tuna cream sauce under a thatch of arugula with no capers.

In terms of main courses, there’s a veal chop and sea bream, three pastas–rigatoni alla Norma (tomato, ricotta and aubergine sauce), spaghetti with clams and shavings of rather extraneous bottarga, and a spaghetti carbonara, and then a long list of nicely made pizzas that are baked in a wood-burning oven. The classic Margharita is good, because of its tangy tomato sauce and the way that the heat of the oven melts the good quality mozzarella without causing it to lose all of its milkiness, but my favorite is the one topped with mozzarella, marinated broccoli rabe, and crumbled sausage; I could, in fact, eat one of these for lunch everyday.

Dining here with a wonderfully ravenous fashion PR friend from New York City, we shared the best starters and a pizza–hey, this woman really is my kind of a gal, before we both had a pasta. While sipping our excellent Sardinian white (the only one on the excellent wine list), we chatted, and Brett nailed the other thing that makes this restaurant so likeable. “Last night I had dinner at the Hotel Costes, and even though I still love the look of the dining room, the service is so up itself that it almost ruined the evening,” she said. “What’s fun here is that the waiters and waiters are really hot but friendly and attitude-free. Don’t you think that service with attitude, which has always been part of the boilerplate in the Costes restaurants, is just so nineties, so over#8221; Yup, I do, and I’d noticed exactly the same thing at Daroco. The staff is nice and alert without ever being in your face, and even when two older American men came through door wearing the kind of pastel stripped polo shirts and ventilated caps more appropriate to a Florida golf course (I suspect the came via a hotel concierge), the hostess was warm, welcoming and didn’t give into any possible temptation to raise an eyebrow or shoot a bemused and perhaps fleetingly snide look at a passing waiter.

My spaghetti carbonara was impressively well made, although the guanciale lacked the depth of potent bristly porcine flavor I crave when I eat it at Roscioli in Rome. Brett’s spaghetti was good, too, but suffered a bit from a surfeit of gummy shavings of bottarga. What works better with this produce is grating it, like they often do in Sardinia and Sicily, since the resulting powder distributes it more evenly and also allows a more judicious dosage of the pleasantly briny pressed and dried mullet eggs.

Eschewing the brief dessert selection, we had sublime espressos from Coutume Cafe, and then opted for a night cap of brilliantly mixed cocktails at Danico, the sexy bar in the very back of the restaurant instead.

Walking home after dinner, I found myself musing on one of the other satisfying things about the meal I’d just had a Daroco, which is that proves the vital good health of the Paris dining scene, and my theory that what makes it so uniquely wonderful is that rings of new gastronomic possibilities are being added to the city’s much love core offer of bistros, brasseries, white-table-cloth restaurants and haute-cuisine tables at a rate not seen in a very longtime. This means that in Paris, like London, L.A., Sydney and New York, you can now eat great Thai for lunch and then tuck into an excellent pizza for dinner. Where Paris continues to hold the ace, however, is that it still offers the world’s best and deepest offer of French cooking, both new and old, in all of its glory.

The English-speaking world’s insatiable appetite for traditional French cooking, or dishes like boeuf bourguignon, exasperates some younger food writers, who construe it as some kind of obfuscating culinary nostalgia, but the reality is that in Paris, I love the fact I can eat David Rathgeber’s (L’Assiette) cassoulet one night and Tatiana Levha’s (Le Servan) cockles in fish sauce the next.

6 Rue Vivienne, 2nd Arrondissement, Paris, Tel. (33) 01-42-21-93-71, Metro:  Open daily noon-midnight. Average 35 Euros. www.daroco.com

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Like most Paris brasseries, La Rotonde was founded long before people started going to restaurants for revelations. No, in those days, people went to restaurants to eat, and they pretty much knew what the menu would look like even before they stepped through the door.

When it opened on the boulevard Montparnasse in 1911, the Left Bank neighborhood was just beginning to attract artists like Picasso and Chagall and it was a busy commercial thoroughfare leading to a one of the city’s main train stations. So people went to La Rotonde to eat, to people watch, to while away an hour or two over a coffee or a glass of wine with the distraction of a book or a sketchpad. But most of all, they went to eat, because that’s why you went to brasseries, the brilliant Parisian invention that made dining out a nonchalant metropolitan pleasure by putting it within reach of almost every pocket and every pocketbook. You went because you were hungry and could get something to eat in a brasserie pretty much all day long and often well into the night.

When I first moved to Paris from London a longtime ago, I couldn’t have explained to you what made a brasserie different from a bistro, but I instinctively liked them, especially since I often worked very irregular hours and me and most of my friends were single. So brasseries were our default choice for a meal, the place to go to snuff out a case of Sunday night blues with friends, or unknot my nerves after work with some oysters and a bottle of Muscadet. They were our one-size-fits-all restaurant, and they reliably offered a good time and a decent enough feed for an acceptable price. (Oh, and the difference between a bistro and a brasserie Very simply, bistros specialize in simmered dishes and sauces, brasseries are about fast cooking, like grilling or frying, with a shellfish stand out front and perhaps a choucroute garni on the menu that refers to their original roots as brewhouse restaurants in Alsace).

And then it all went wrong during the 1990s when most of the great brasseries of Paris were swallowed up by chains, which increasingly resorted to commissary-supplied kitchens and gastronomic shortcuts to make these places as lucrative as possible. The thing is, of course, is that this didn’t go unnoticed, and like thousands of other Parisians, I sadly gave up on brasseries as their quality tumbled and their prices soared.

A brasserie revival has been in the making for a longtime, with chef Eric Frechon getting things off to a solid start several years ago when he opened Lazare and the Minipalais. Last year, chef Mauro Colagreco of Miramar opened the excellent Grand Coeur brasserie in the Marais. Now Alain Ducasse has a new-style brasserie slated for  Les Halles, which will open this spring, and chef Thierry Marx has another one in the works, Le Train Blanc, for the Gare du Nord later this year.

In the meantime, however, the only possible brasserie I could pull out of my hat when I had to find a place for a “cheerful and lively meal”  at the request of a friend who was inviting me and Bruno out to dinner as a Christmas present on a Sunday night the weekend before New Year’s was, rather guardedly, La Rotonde. I say guardedly because if it’s a popular table with an intriguing tapestry of Parisians and out-of-towners woven from   politicians, show-biz types, captains of industry, a complete alphabet of the French bourgeoisie, plus the happy shot of Lurex supplied by well-bred wide-eyed tourists who are more welcome in town than ever, the service can be luck of the draw, sometimes charming, sometimes bored and brusque, sometimes a mixture of all three.

Protective of my friend’s purse and pride–she’d never ever have let us snatch up the bill at the end of the meal as would be our wont, I knew the three-course 44 Euro prix-fixe menu offered a reliably good feed for the money and also that there are several pleasant reasonably priced bottles on the wine list, too: Mâcon AOC Domaine du Gros Mont, La Roche Vineuse 2014, 28 Euros and an organic Languedoc AOC Hecht & Bannier 2014, for example. So we went.

Wild boar terrine by Gilles Verot

There was a nice buzzy in the room when we came in on a rainy Sunday night, too, and it was the occupants of the booths around us provided an intriguing array of vignettes to decipher as a backdrop to our conversation as we perused the menu, which was encouragingly dotted with dishes that deserved organic shout-outs for their ingredients or brand-name produce, like a veal chop supplied by butcher Hugo Desnoyer. Here a noticeably affectionate and very attractive middle-aged brother and sister on one side of the table and their scowling silent spouses who refused to look at each other on the other. And in that corner, the older man and cute younger boy, both with the telltale wet hair of a recent shower, and across from them, hmmm, a heart-warming example of a very rare Parisian genus, a middle-aged man-and-wife who were clearly still besotted by each other.

So everyone in the room was hungry, if for different reasons and different delicacies, but to start Judy chose the wild-boar terrine from the excellent nearby charcutier Gilles Vérot, and after a lot of silent hemming and hawing on my part–the odds were extremely good that I’d regret my choice, in much the same way I always regret ordering anything called ‘risotto’ in France–I rolled the dice and order the quenelle de brochet gratinée façon manta (fluffy pike-perch dumplings with crayfish sauce, a specialty of the Rhone-Alps region), because I love them and I wanted something light. Bruno shot me a dubious ‘Do you think that’s a good idea#8217; kind of glance but then he followed suit. Fifteen minutes later, all three of us briefly enjoyed a contented silence as we sampled our starters.

The squirt-bottle graffiti–Why I mean, really. Why#8211;of balsamic vinegar notwithstanding, Judy’s terrine was politely feral and had the thrillingly varied texture–by turns emollient and chunky–that displays the charcutier’s true art. Our quenelles had nothing to do with the air-plane catering style dish I feared, but were airy, gently fishy, and napped in a hot sauce Nantua (crayfish cream sauce pinkened by tomato paste) that was just as comforting as a flannel blanket in a tent on a cold night.

Our main courses were nicely executed vieille France comfort food, too, and this is exactly what we wanted on this particular evening. “Isn’t this nice#8221; said Judy after sampling her sea bass filet on a bed of white-and-wild rice in a sauce of preserved lemons. “It reminds me of the good old days when you could just enjoy your food without talking it or photographing it to death.” I nodded, and waited a few minutes before I started snapping away again.

In the same way that I was skeptical about the quality of my quenelles, I had my doubts about ordering an aioli, cod and boiled vegetables with garlic mayonnaise, a provencal dish that’s one of my favorites, in a restaurant where I suspected the uptight fear of bad breath might cause the kitchen to be too light-handed with the garlic. But no. The little sauceboat of mayonnaise packed just the garlicky punch I needed after several days of extravagant Christmas food, including foie gras, seared scallops in a sauce of bergamot and Cointreau that I invented, and lobster (for Bruno’s birthday dinner on December 25–yes, he’s a Christmas baby) all on the same day, and brought me back down to earth, which is where I like to eat best of all anyway.

I was fascinated by Bruno’s perfectly cooked Scottish salmon in a sauce Genevoise with nicely made potato puree, too, because I couldn’t remember ever having sampled this particular sauce, which was invented by Escoffier. When I asked the waiter about it, I was surprised by how accurate and in-depth his explanation was, to wit, “The sauce is made from sauce Espagnole [one of Escoffier’s five mother sauces, a deeply reduced brown sauce alternately made with veal stock or hambone stock], a fumet made from salmon heads, vegetables, white wine and lots of butter, bien sur.” It actually even tasted as though it had been largely made on the premises, too, although many restaurants buy in their fonds de sauces these days. Oh, and by the way, if you’re thinking, hmmm, that salmon’s a rather grand dish for brasserie grub, you’re right, but La Rotonde is very much of a black silk-stockings (and hidden garter belts) kind of a place.

Only one of us could manage dessert (it wasn’t me), so we shared some profiteroles, filled with good vanilla ice cream and lashed with a sauce of Valrhona chocolate, and they were delicious. Served with charm and a deep professional knowledge of proper table service, this meal was the kind of feed upon which the good reputation of French cooking was originally constructed, because what this food says is that you can eat well even when you’re not interested in making a fuss about it or spending too much money.

La Rotonde, 105 boulevard Montparnasse, 6th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-43-26-48-26, Metro: Vavin. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Prix-fixe menu 44 Euros. Average a la carte 60 Euros. www.rotondemontparnasse.com

The post La Rotonde, Paris | The Pleasures of Simplicity, B+ appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.

Most animals hibernate during the winter, but not me. My annual digestive downtime occurs every August during the ten days I spend in a small Catalan beach town. While I don’t actually stop eating, I do look forward to the invigorating simplicity of the food I eat there. To wit, after dining in Paris and many other large European cities all year long for professional reasons, it’s a pleasure to eat pan tomate, the olive-oil-and-garlic anointed tomato-juice smeared toast beloved of the Catalans, to make a whole meal of nothing but clams steamed in a little oil, garlic, parsley and white wine, and eat no dessert more complicated than melon or the succulent peaches that grow in the hills nearby. Stepping to one side and eating simply isn’t only a pleasure, however, but a necessity, because I feel it’s incumbent upon me to sit down to any meal I might write about with a real appetite, sincere enthusiasm, and honest curiosity, because cooking is such hard work that it would entirely unfair to present myself at the table otherwise.

It’s always exciting to return to Paris after this much loved annual break, too, since while I’m away my palate eventually begins to crave food that’s more creative and complex than what I can find in the beach town, and this is why I was looking forward to dinner at A Mere, a contemporary French table that opened a few weeks ago in the gastronomically blossoming 10th Arrondissement, when I went the other night. Bruno was already drinking a nice glass of Austrian Grüner Veltliner, a preview of the excellent wine list created by Mikaël Grou, a sommelier who had previously worked at Le V at the Hotel George V, when I arrived. “We’re back to menu haiku again,” he said, pushing the nine-entry menu–three starters, three mains, three desserts–across the bare wood table to me. By this he meant that the dishes were somewhat obliquely described as just a list of three ingredients.

I knew what he meant, which is the rather tedious tendency of many young Paris chefs to mystifying menu minimalism,  but in this instance, I wasn’t bothered, because this verbal feint was actually pretty accurate when our first courses arrived. The only important ingredient that hadn’t been listed in my starter described as ‘Tomatoes Green Zebra, Lieu, Cassis” (Green Zebra tomatoes, yellow pollack, currants) was faiselle, or the softy runny white cheese that provided the lactic base backdrop that allowed the varying tones of acidity in the other ingredients to become so interesting. The variety of texture in this dish made it exciting, too, since the currant skin and seed brought more mouth feel to the raw marinated fish and the pulpy tomatoes. Lemon balm leaves and flowers (Melisse, in French) provided some puckishly pertinent punctuation to this dish, too.

Entitled “Figue, Anguille, Roscoff,” (Fig, eel, pink Roscoff onion from Brittany), Bruno’s first course was similarly lush from the percusion created by a similarly construed construction of perfectly ripe fig, smoked eel, tiny cubes of Ossau Irate cheese and petals of gently sweet Roscoff onion. Tellingly, though, the waiter was visibly disappointed that we had so ably deciphered ‘Roscoff,’ without his help. And this made me wonder once again why young chefs attach such a fierce importance to the idea of ‘surprise’ in their cooking, since ultimately I’d rather be delighted than surprised, and the back-up insistence on surprise often seems more a out of ego than a desire to please ones clients.

Then again, many young Paris chefs actually loathe the idea of trying to please their clients, preferring to believe instead that people come to them on bended knee for magic-show-like manifestations of their brilliance. Sometimes this happens, sometimes the construction resembles the last scene of the “Wizard of Oz” more than it does any revelation in a temple, but one way or another, the two starters cooked by young Brazilian born chef Mauricio Zillo were pretty brilliant and incredibly original despite the fact that he’s worked in a suite of famous kitchens, including Paul Bocuse, Santi Santamaria (in Dubai), Arzak, and Rebelot in Milan.

As is very often the case with this thrummingly eager and strivingly creative style of cooking, the main courses were less interesting than the starters. Bruno’s dish of lamb sweetbreads with roasted cauliflower, candy beets, rhubarb and muscat grapes was the more successful of the two, since the sweetbreads and the cauliflower flattered each other and the various fruits add acidity and bite respectively. The waiter explained that my veal breast had been “cooked at a very low temperature for a very longtime, which has changed its texture.” Perhaps. But not in any toothsome way, since the meat had become rather curiously dried out and compact. Still, it has a nice concentrated flavor that was drawn out by garnishes of grilled baby fennel and beans, but the mirabelle plum foam failed to provide the sweet-and-sour punch that would have given this dish more relief.

None of these flaws detracted from the fact that both dishes were pleasant if not exactly revelatory, and they also offered more insight into Zillo’s winsomely turgid culinary imagination, which was quickly back on course with our desserts.

I couldn’t resist “Reine Claude, Groseille, Mimolette” (Reine Claude plums from Lorraine, currants, and Mimolette cheese ice cream), because I love all three of these ingredients and they promised such an intriguingly seasonal panoply of tastes. The dish turned out to be a clever but very logical constellation of well-balanced flavors, too, since the sweet stone fruit loved the salt and nutty taste of the cheese in the ice cream.

Despite the gorgeous juicy peaches, Bruno’s “Peche de vigne, reglisse, noisettes”  (peaches, liquorice, hazelnuts) didn’t mull together to produce the same pleasure my dish did. The liquorice was barely present, which was probably just as well, since I can’t quite fathom why a perfectly ripened peach would have been flattered by this flavor, and the coffee-seasoned pastry cream seemed pretty extraneous.

All dishes demonstrated that Zillo is a really interesting chef with a wonderful mastery of technique and a nervy new mastery of the scores of taste and texture. I didn’t find a signature in his cooking, yet, but I knowing nothing about his mother, I can only assume that the word play in the restaurant’s name refers to his evident love of differing tones of bitterness and acidity as his vector of expression. Already a very good chef, he’s obviously going to become a serious culinary contender in Paris.

A Mere, 49 rue de l’Échiquier, 10th Arrondissement, Tel. (33) 01-73-20-24-52. Metro: Poissonnière, Bonne Nouvelle, or Château d’Eau, Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Average three-course meal 35 Euros. www.amere.fr

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The Sofitel, New York City

“So what is French food#8221; she asked me. I very much doubt that she’ll ever read these words, but before all else, I want to thank Betty Russo for both her question and her kindness.

Several months later, I still cringe when I remember the way our conversation began. On a warm Spring night, a New Haven bound Metro North train jolted when the transformers were turned on, and then gently rocked its way out of New York City’s Grand Central Station and under Park Avenue to come above ground a few minutes later just before a stop at 125th Street. On my way to speak about my books HUNGRY FOR PARIS and HUNGRY FOR FRANCE at the public library in Westport, Connecticut, my hometown, that night, I was roiled by various emotions. Earlier in the day, it had first dawned on me that this event would be about much more than a just little speech about a pair of books I’d written and my life in Paris to a group of politely interested people. My mother would be in the audience, along with other family members and many other people who’ve known me since I was a little boy. Having chosen to live abroad for most of my adult life, I’d realized that my speech in Westport, a place I’ve always had mixed feelings about–it’s beautiful, smart and morally self-examining on the one hand and way too grossly privileged on the other, would be about splicing myself together, or reconciling the shy little boy who spent hours reading about faraway places and who yearned to know a larger and more vivid world than the one I inhabited with the adult I have become.

So on the train I was sort of fitfully reading a copy of PARIS MATCH I’d lifted from the airport lounge in Paris a few days earlier, and I was so preoccupied on so many different levels that I was startled when someone, the woman I’d sat down next to but hadn’t really seen, spoke to me.

Escargots at Benoit @pierremonetta

“Do you speak French#8221; she asked, which momentarily exasperated me. Why would I be reading a French magazine if I didn’t know the language So I nodded, and then registering that she was an older lady, I relented, and I spoke. “I do,” I said and smiled. “And where did you learn that#8221; she asked. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk, and I’m not generally much of a talker with total strangers in public transport situations under any circumstances, because I like the rare time to myself, but I certainly wasn’t going to be unkind. Maybe I didn’t feel like having a conversation, but maybe someone else really needed one. “Well, I started learning French in school–” I noticed the lady had gentle green eyes “–but I really learned it after I moved to Paris.” “Oh! So do you live in Paris now#8221; I nodded. “Is that where you bought that magazine#8221; Another nod. “How lovely that must be, especially now that you know how to speak French.” I nodded, and was still tempted to return to my reading out of some ill-defined fear that this conversation could be depleting me of the fragile social and psychic energies I’d soon be needing in front of the crowd at the public library. Then I noticed that her soft white hands, which she held together loosely in her lap, were lightly trembling. “So are you on your way home then, or is New York home#8221; I asked. “Oh, New York, I don’t think I could ever do that. It’s very interesting but I love my little garden too much to ever sell my old house in New Haven.” “What do you grow in your garden “Tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplant, corn, all kinds of nice things. Right now, though, all I’ve got is just a little bit of lettuce and some radishes.” Her name was Betty Russo, a retired seamstress who used to work in a Gant shirt factory, and she’d gone into New York City for the first time in five years to visit her son, “Tommy,” who’d just had a serious operation in a Manhattan hospital.

So I told her who was I was, too–from Westport, a food and travel writer, living in Europe for a longtime, now returning home to speak at the library. When I finished, she laughed, and patted me on the knee. “So it’s a big day for you then!” she said and chuckled. She really chuckled. I laughed, too, with her and at her, and also with and at myself. Then she said, “You know what It’s a good thing you’re doing this, and it’s going to be a big success. You just wait!.” I nodded. “Too bad you don’t have time to come to New Haven for a nice pizza, a nice white clam pizza.” I told her I have a permanent yearning for New Haven clam pizza but wouldn’t have the time. We paused, a fleeting but sweet space during which I think we were both trying to think of ways to be kind to each other in the context of a brief encounter. “So Alexander what is French food I know, it’s fancy and expensive and all that, but I’ve never really understood what it is, like I know that Mexican means tacos, or Japanese means sushi, which I wouldn’t eat if you held a gun to my head, mind you, raw fish, no thank you, but French, well–beyond quiche, I just draw a blank.”

So we chatted about French food, and I wasn’t sure if I was making much sense with my talk about produce and terroir and what have you, and then Betty, ever alert–we’d just stopped in Darien, which meant I’d be leaving the train soon, cut to the chase. “Alexander, can you give me the address of French restaurant or two in New York City One would be for my grand-daughter who loves good food, so maybe a real French place, not too fancy, but okay, a little expensive if it’s worth it, so I can take her out for graduation from nursing school, and the other would be for my daughter-in-law….” Betty sighed. “You know, well…they’re times when you do your best. She’s a very bright girl, Tommy’s wife, a lawyer! But she has all sorts of what she calls ‘issues’ with food, can’t eat this, can’t eat that. Won’t eat anything from my garden because she says the soil might have heavy metal, whatever the heck that might be.” Betty brushed some imaginary crumbs from the front of her blouse. “I think we may be spending more time together, because of my son’s illness, so think I’d like to take her out to lunch and try and put things off on a better foot between us.”

I might have wept. Instead, I told Betty to take her daughter-in-law to lunch at Gaby’s at the Sofitel New York City on 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, an easy walk from Grand Central, which would mean she could arrive without taking a cab, and her granddaughter to Benoit. If you know more about French restaurants in New York, you may be thinking, but what about Daniel or DB Bistro or Batard or Jean-Georges or dozens of other French places in New York Why these?

I’d recently discovered Gaby, the restaurant at the Sofitel, sort of by accident. This upmarket French owned and run hotel most recently made notorious due to what did or didn’t transpire in one of its rooms between International Monetary Fund chairman Dominique Strauss Khan and a West African chambermaid has always been a stealth address for me in New York City. By this I mean, they’re times when I arrive in New York City from Paris so bone-deep tired I can barely put one foot in front of another, and then all I want is a really comfortable well-run hotel with reasonable prices in a great location. I don’t want a pillow menu, I don’t want a bath butler, I don’t want all of that. I just want a good well-run hotel with a little style that doesn’t make you wonder if you’re casting yourself correctly. I never stay more than a night or two, because I have friends in New York, but this little sojourn is a gift to myself to get things off to the right foot on a U.S. trip. I’d never really given any thought to the restaurant here–I’ve always gone out–but when I was there in May, the weather was almost tropical the day I got in, the heavens opened as I was walking up Sixth Avenue from Penn Station, and I arrived looking and feeling like a drowned rat. A nice hot shower made me hungry.  Still, it was pouring outside, and I was suspended in that strange but not unpleasant place  of being both famished and exhausted, so as rain streaked my windows, it occurred to me that I could look up the menu at the hotel’s restaurant online, and low-and-behold, it looked good, really good.

So I went downstairs to Gaby, where a pair of charming French speaking Cambodians couldn’t have possibly made me feel more welcome, and I had a really good meal. First I succumbed to the gimmicky sounding ‘foie gras spring rolls,’ and was surprised they were delicious–gorgeous little spools of foie gras, figs, prosciutto and just enough greenery to make it all seem healthy, and then a beautifully cooked Vancouver Bay salmon filet on a bed of crushed purple potatoes with an impeccably made beurre blanc. This meal really surprised me–it was such an unexpected exemplar of intelligent contemporary French cooking within the confines of a hotel setting–and probably because I was asking the nice older ‘Yugoslav’ waiter so many questions, chef Sylvain Harribey stopped by my table before I went upstairs. A nice guy from Bordeaux, he said he loved cooking in New York, was motivated by Sofitel’s new commitment to healthy dining in its restaurants, and was intensely aware that he was representing France in the world with his efforts. “French food is still often a little misunderstood in the U.S.,” he said. “A lot of people still think of it as rich, fancy and expensive, so  so I’m pretty point blank my cooking here. What I do is healthy contemporary French cooking, and it’s all about the produce and all about technique. What’s changed since I’ve lived in the U.S. is that I can now get such fantastic raw materials. In terms of my style, I’m a modern but feet-on-the-ground type of guy. I don’t want to eat flowers–I’m not a goat!–I want a good meal.” I wasn’t in the mood for edible flowers that night either, and what I had was a very good meal from a chef who knows to cater to a sophisticated health-conscious clientele without neglecting the wick of pleasure that lights up any good meal.

Benoit, NYC @pierremonetta

So in this instance, I was confident Betty could invite her complicated daughter-in-law to lunch here and call her bluff in more ways than one. For the granddaughter, however, I had to do some quick thinking on my feet. In days of yore, there were a dozen or so plain-vanilla French restaurants in the West 50s that were run by the families of mostly Breton cruise-liner crew members who’d decided to stay on make a life for themselves in America. To my knowledge, they’re mostly all gone now, so the type of beautifully prepared classic Gallic menus they offered have become rare.

I haven’t lived in New York City in twenty-five years, but I so wanted to suggest a perfect second address to Betty for her special dinner with her granddaughter, and happily I could, because I’d recently gone to dinner with my old boss, a certain Madame Ruth Reichl, at Benoit, Alain Ducasse’s spin on the Paris original in New York City. I’d been to Benoit once before a very longtime ago, and hadn’t particularly liked it, first of all because the food was so wiltingly removed from the mother ship and also because I just plain didn’t cotton to the idea of trying to merchandise such a profoundly Parisian bistro in a city that had such a different culinary history and produce culture. On this particular evening, the only one Ruth and I could find that cross-hatched, she was just getting out of a book promo event late and wanted somewhere easy and midtown, and since NYC pals had insisted that Benoit has evolved into a really good restaurant , I booked it and hoped for the best.

Roast chicken at Benoit @pierremonetta

As it turned out, the best was actually much better than that, too. We had an excellent meal. The almost poignantly talented French chef Philippe Bertineau–I say poignantly, because how many of his foreign and out-of-town clients can really understand just how good he is in the context of being a Frenchman charged with flying the flag of traditional Gallic gastronomic glory in New York City and cooking almost exclusively with North American produce–immediately won us over with some of the best soft-shell crabs I’ve ever eaten.

Calf’s liver with potatoes @pierre monetta

I don’t mind admitting that I made a real pig of myself during this meal either, since I evinced an urgent need for tart flambé, the thin-crusted Alsatian tart topped with creme fraiche, bacon and onions, the moment I saw it on the menu, and we also wolfed down one of the best lobster salads I’ve eaten in a longtime. Then Ruth went for the roast chicken, as I rather knew she would, and I decided to see what calf’s liver might be like in the U.S. (When I moved overseas many years ago, I was not yet a calf’s liver eating type of guy, an error that has since been lavishly rectified). Bertineau’s liver–crusted but custard-like inside, with chive-flecked sautéed potatoes, brought on a blanket of homely pleasure and also the exuberance of an expat off-handedly rediscovering the spectacular evolution of the daily  quality of American food, even in the context of a classic French dish cooked by a French chef.

MIllefeuille @pierre monetta

And finally, even though it was late and we were tired, we were having too much fun to shut down our dinner too quickly, and so we shared a gorgeous millefeuille that was sort of a communion-wafer-stand-in for how we became friends and colleagues–we both love great French food. Some other time I’ll blow on the embers of the absolutely catastrophic lunch over which Ruth and I first met each other, but for now, suffice it to say that this meal made it easy for me to tell the lovely Betty that this was where she should take her food-loving granddaughter.

Gaby, Hotel Sofitel New York City, 44 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036 Tel. (1) 212-782-3040, www.gabynyrestaurant.com Open daily. Average three-course dinner for two without wine $130

Benoit, 60 W 55th St, New York, NY 10019, Tel. (1) 212-646-943-7373, www.benoitny.com Open daily. Average three-course dinner for two without wine $150

The post “So What is French Food#8221; Benoit and Gaby Offer a Delicious Answer to That Question in New York City appeared first on Alexander Lobrano.