Le Tintilou, formerly known as l’Aiguière

For those who fret that the food in Paris isn’t as good as it used to be, it’s a pleasure for me to point out the remarkable ongoing renewal of the neighborhood restaurants which are the bedrock of Paris’s gastronomic reputation. A perfect example of this delicious and accelerating phenomenon is Le Tintilou, which opened a few weeks ago in the former premises of a long-running but not very good restaurant called L’Aiguière.

Continue reading…

A long time ago the space occupied by Qui Plume la Lune, a new Franco-Asian restaurant near the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11th arrondissement, was occupied by a very sweet little restaurant called Au C’Amelot, and since this was a place I liked a lot, I set off for dinner with my friend Judy, another very long-time American-in-Paris, with the hopes that we’d find the latest gastronomic incarnation of this narrow dining room with exposed stone walls to be as happy as its predecessor. I arrived before she did, and was immediately puzzled by by the desultory welcome of the two-member team here. Despite having made a reservation, I instantly had the impression of being an intruder on these premises, but I ordered a glass of Quincy and decided that maybe it wasn’t them, it was me, since I’d had a very busy and rather trying day. This reflex seemed pretty fair, too, since even before we show up in a restaurant, we’re arriving charged with our own good or bad mood.

Still, I found myself musing over the fact that the first thing any restaurant should do is offer you a warm welcome and assure that you’re comfortably seated before your meal begins, but for reasons that escape me, they’re a lot of new and very popular restaurants in Paris these days where one feels as though one’s presence is an imposition of some sort. To wit, the bluff attitude you experience when you arrives says ‘we’re hot, we’re hip, you’re lucky to be here’. For my part, I wilt as soon as I detect this posture, because the most essential motivation of any chef and his team has to be a desire to offer people pleasure and the decision to have a meal in a restaurant is a profoundly optional choice.

Continue reading…

I like to think of myself as an honest man, but in Paris, there’s one instance in which I am regularly unfaithful whenever the occasion arises. Most of the time I buy my meat at the Boucherie Chaptal in the rue Blanche not far from where I live in the 9th, but whenever I can persuade Bruno to make an expedition to Hugo Desnoyer’s butcher shop in the deep 14th arrondissement, I throw over my local meat man in a heart beat.

Continue reading…

If the area around the Canal Saint Martin has been a bobo playground for several years now, there’s no better proof that the 10th arrondissement around this chunk of Paris’s gloriously gaudy 19th century town hall is coming on strong as a great new restaurant district than the opening of Pierre Jancou’s new Vivant in a stunning beautiful shopfront on the rue des Petites Ecuries. Since the amiable Jancou, a warm smart Swiss born guy who’s background is so mixed–Romanian, Swiss-German, French and Italian, that he could be an American, formerly ran the hugely popular Racines, this new spot, only open for four days but already packed to the rafters, is one of the most hotly anticipated openings in Paris this Spring.

Continue reading…

I have a hopeless weakness for cookbooks. In fact the book shelves in my home office are positively groaning with them, and during a recent trip to Switzerland, I spent several hours fighting off temptation at Librairie Gastéréa, which is located in Lausanne and features cookbooks and other works on gastronomy and oenology, as well as food and cooking themed literature. As is invariably the case, I’m still regretting the fact that I didn’t spring for a 1921 English language food guide to France or another cookbook that was devoted entirely to oysters.

Continue reading…

Room With a View   I spent much of last week traveling in Switzerland with friends, and enjoyed several really spectacular meals in towns along Lac Leman (Lake Geneva in English), or the French speaking swathe of the country known as ‘La Suisse Romande.’

Continue reading…