TRAVELS IN THE NEW WORLD: NYC—Maialino, A-; Kajitsu, A-; CT—Ola, B; Little Thai Kitchen, B-

August 26, 2010

Left-Bank“THE LEFT BANK,” 15 Street & 6th Avenue, NYC….Er, um, well not quite.  When I was growing up in Westport, Connecticut in the sixties and seventies, the default “good” restaurant was a place down near the train station called Manero’s, an Italian-American owned steakhouse with a brick walls covered with shiny copper cookware and jovial older waiters with accents of indeterminable origin. This was where Grandmother Drake would take us for a birthday dinner or sometimes just a special night out, and with her pretty green eyes, Titian blonde hair in up-swept French Twist chignon, good jewelry, faux leopard jacket and quick wit, the waiters adored her. The running joke at almost every meal was that it was her birthday, and they’d often bring out a baked Alaska with a candle in it for her after we’d eaten the exact same meal we always had: cocktails—bourbon for the adults, and Shirley Temples for the girls or Horse’s Necks for the boys, the difference being in name only, because they were the same concoction of ginger ale and grenadine syrup with an orange slice and a vivid Maraschino cherry (oddly enough, the concept of children’s cocktails seems to have gone completely out of style…can’t think why), shrimp cocktail, steak with onion rings, baked potatoes wrapped in foil, and salad with blue-cheese dressing.

If the food at Manero’s was good, no one could ever have accused it of being interesting, but then in those days no one wanted food that was interesting. To be sure, Westport had an excellent Chinese restaurant, West Lake, and the Italian food at the Apizza Center in nearby Fairfield was wonderful, too, but aside from a couple of New England-y seafood places—The Clam Box, etc., and a “French” restaurant downtown where they flambéed everything, but most of all the bill, the town offered slim pickings for anyone who really loved good food with the exception of the rather mysterious Café Varna, which served, rather amazingly in retrospect, Bulgarian food.

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LE VAUDEVILLE, One of the Last Decent Brasseries in Paris, B; LES ENFANTS DE PARIS, Franco-Brazilian via New York City, C-

August 19, 2010

Obsessively interested in good food, I always have the makings of at least one or two good meals on hand at home so that as someone who travels often, I never end up being forced to call out for a mediocre pizza or Indian food of unknown quality at the last minute. Returning home to Paris after ten wonderful sunny days in Greece on a cool, rainy Monday night, however, I knew I needed something happier than a bowl of spaghetti carbonara, an all-time comfort-food favorite, to revive my wilting spirits. Waiting for our luggage to come up, Bruno and I had talked about going to Hokkaido, a favorite Japanese noodle and dumpling place in the rue Chabanais, but since it took forever for the bags to arrive–why is Charles de Gaulle sooo slow?, I knew we’d never make it. So we were hurtling into town in a cab when he turned to me and voiced the very same thoughts I was having: “How about going to Le Vaudeville for some oysters and a steak tartare?” Yes! Oysters and steak tartare were exactly what I wanted after a gastronomic sojourn dominated by grilled octopus and squid, Greek salad, white wine and ouzo.

On the way to this pretty art-deco brasserie in front of La Bourse in the 2nd arrondissement, I couldn’t help but being a tiny bit anxious about our decision, however. Why? Most Paris brasseries have become caught in a no-go inflection point between their ever rising prices and the mediocrity of their food. I always remember Le Vaudeville as being a rare exception to this sad rule, but would I be disappointed?

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POSTCARD FROM GREECE: Great Meals in Athens and Paros

August 14, 2010

DSCN1023.JPGSunset on the roof, Paros

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LE SAOTICO, Good Modern French Cuisine du Marche, B ; LE COMPTOIR DU RELAIS, Open Seating Sunday Dinner, C+/B-

August 3, 2010

A long time ago in the Latin Quarter, there was a terrific little restaurant called Le Reminet. It still exists, and it’s still pretty good, but since founding chef Hugues Gournay and his delightful wife Anne Surcouf moved on, it’s fallen off of my regular go-to list. So I was delighted the other day to have a note from Surcouf telling me that she and her husband had opened a new place, the curiously named Le Saotico (according to Surcouf, the word is Norman slang for the little gray shrimp found in the waters off of their native Cotentin peninsula in Normandy).

Now they’ve set up shop in a good-looking duplex space on the rue de Richelieu in the 2nd arrondissement. Walking there to meet a friend for lunch, I found myself wondering how they’d make a go of it in this neighborhood, since they can count on a good lunch trade from the many nearby banks, but the area goes very quiet at night. It turns out they’d thought of this through already, though, since the restaurant is currently only open from 8am-8pm, with the plan being to open one night a week for dinner sometime this Fall.

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LONDON CALLING: BAR BOULUD, Perfect for Lunch, B; BISTROT BRUNO LOUBET, B+, Ideal for Sunday Dinner

July 28, 2010

The first time I lived in London in the late Seventies, the food generally came as a pretty dire shock. On a student’s budget, I certainly wasn’t able to frequent any of what then passed for the city’s better tables, but still, aside from our local Indian, a jolly if middling Russian place on the King’s Road called Borsch N’ Tears where we went for the chicken Kiev and the Vodka, the original Hard Rock cafe to sate a desperate craving for a more or less proper burger (shame about the fact that it went on to become such a naff chain), and a terrific little Polish restaurant behind the South Kensington tube station, I ate badly day in and day out. Aside from scampi (breaded prawns) and chips, pub food scared the wits out of me, and I prowled the aisles of my local supermarket, the Sainsbury’s on the North End Road in a pre-gentrified Fulham that was heavy on retired civil servants and unmarried children living at home with their ancient parents, with lurid curiosity, since everytime I went, I came across yet another little horror. One day it was canned spaghetti, another pre-cooked frozen hamburgers on buns in a box with a stylized version of the stars and stripes.

The second time I lived there in the late eighties, things had improved a lot. Indian food had gone main stream, and Marks & Spencer–then, not now–had wonderful food departments with all sorts of delicious Indian and Asian ready-to-eat meals. I had more money, too, and after the Big Bang, there was suddenly a lot of money sloshing around the city, which led to a welcome restaurant boom. To be sure, everything was far from perfect. I was living with a vegetarian who hated garlic and onions–his idea of a wonderful meal was a baked potato with lots of butter and grated cheddar, and Fulham, were I oddly found myself for a second time, had sprouted a lot of poncey restaurants with stuffy decors meant to ape some imaginary version of the perfect English country house and “French” menus that delivered dishes a real Gaul would gape at. Still, my food-loving brother and his soon-to-be English bride were as keen on tracking down good tables as I was, as were several other English friends, almost all of whom had lived abroad and had a culinary awakening.

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MYSTERY CUISINE, Good Food with an Amusing Side of Theater, B+; ROSSI & CO, A Nice Neapolitan, B

July 21, 2010

Cards on the table, I’ve always been pretty dubious about molecular cooking, often finding that I want a real chef in the kitchen instead of a gastronomic Salvador Dali. Instead, I whole-heartedly subscribe to the infallible dictum of Auguste Escoffier who said “Cooking becomes genius when things taste of what they are.” So science in the kitchen doesn’t really work for me.

On the other hand, I’m not adverse to food as entertainment, and so it was with great curiosity that I went to dinner the other night at the teasingly named Mystery Cuisine, a tiny restaurant next to the Palais Royal. Since my pal David and I had been enjoying the terrace at the nearby Cafe de Nemours, one of my favorites, I was a little apprehensive about stepping into a heat box when we arrived at the front door. Instead, we were greeted by a gust of nicely chilled air and amiable chef-owner Edouard Desrousseaux de Vandières and led to a table for two in a partially curtained niche of this low-lit and decidedly mysterious dining room.

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