After dinner last week with two sweet and seriously tatooed guys from LA, and David and Romain, an adorable Franco-American couple who live in Paris, in one of the oldest and best-known bistros in Paris, Chez Denise, an old-timer in Les Halles, I had a bee in my bonnet as I walked home. If we ate well, the real pleasure of being at this place was the high-testosterone sepia-toned Parisian atmosphere. But since the Los Angelinos really know and love great food, I felt as though we’d let them down a bit–they were waiting to be clobbered by a knock-out good bistro meal, which, unfortunately, was what I had the following night at the Restaurant du Marche in a remote corner of the 15th arrondissement. Point blank, this was one of the best meals that I’d eaten in Paris for a longtime, and if the service hadn’t been a bit unfriendly–polite but poker-faced throughout the meal, I’d have rated this table a flat-out A.
It took Bruno and I a longtime to find it–it’s way out on the very edges of Paris between the Porte de Versailles and the Porte de Vanves, but the moment we arrived, I knew we were in the right place. I hadn’t even hung my jacket over the back of my bentwood chair when a saucer of finely sliced sausage arrived at the table, and it was delicious with a modestly priced glass of white Cotes du Gascogne. I’ve had this place on a Post-It note stuck to my computer for ages, but what finally propelled me to go was a rave review by Francois Simon, the estimable food critic of Le Figaro, one of the major French dailies. I’ve worked with Francois several times–I suggested that he write the endpaper for a GOURMET special edition of Paris–it seemed too colonial for us to do an entire edition with only American writers and not a single French voice, and then translated it into English as gently as I could, since he has a wonderfully idiosyncratic style, and we’ve also collaborated as editors on Zagat’s Paris Guide. Through this work, and having read him for years, I know that we share not only almost identical food but restaurant tastes, and so his enthusiasm goaded me on to this remote bistro.
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