Having come across several glowing reports of chef Thierry Marx’s new menu at Ozu, a Japanese restaurant tucked away in the aquarium at the Jardins du Trocadero, I went to dinner on Saturday with the blessedly indefatigible Bruno. For those who don’t know Marx, he’s the chef at Cordeillan Bages in Paulliac just north of Bordeaux, and he has two stars as one of the stars of the portentously and pretentiously named “molecular” cooking espoused by Ferran Adria, the grand priest of the movement. Oh–and what is molecular cooking? A lot of things, but mostly a cooking style that explores and highlights the chemical reactions that take place when food is cooked, which, of course, sounds more like NASA than Escoffier.

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For fifteen years I lived in the 7th arrondissement, first in the rue Monsieur and then in the rue du Bac right next door to the Couvent de la Medaille Miraculeuse. During this improbable stint in one of Paris’s swankiest arrondissements, I very rarely dined locally, which is to say within a five minute walk of my front door.

To be sure, there were a few good places nearby, notably L’Epi Dupin when it first opened and before it became so hopelessly overcrowded and manic. But as the nice woman in the now vanished bakery which used to fill the courtyard with wonderful buttery vapors every morning explained to me, my neighbors were more “gratte sou and Picard.”

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The first time I ever went to Benoit was one of the happiest meals I’ve had in 22 years of living in Paris. Three friends surprised me with dinner here as a birthday present, and I instantly feel in love with this mink-coat of a bistro in an ancient side street, the rue Saint Martin, not far from the Hotel de Ville and the Centre Pompidou. We ate terrine de foie gras, sauteed wild mushrooms, and cassoulet, all washed down with one of the best Pomerol I’ve ever had in my life.

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The Marais, the 4th arrondissement and part of the 3rd, has always been one of my favorite parts of Paris. I think the Place des Vosges is the perfect urban square a la francaise, I love the neighborhood’s architecture, and, most of all its diversity. The Marais was the original Jewish quarter in Paris, later became the center of Gay life in the city, and today is a deliciously overlapping mix of smart, tolerant, liberal-minded people who love to read (they’re lots of good book stores) and talk (great cafes abound).

Curiously, though, this part of the city has always been sort of a letdown for anyone who loves good food. To be sure, there’s the wonderful L’As du Falafel (world’s best as far as I’m concerned) in the rue de Rosiers, and a few other decent spots, like Chez Omar in the rue de Bretagne, but over-all, it’s never been a great food neighborhood.

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On a beautiful sunny Monday morning in Florence, the San Ambrogio market was humming with hungry Florentines, and what an astonishing array of beautiful things were on display to tempt them–late (very!) season asparagus from Campania, porcini mushrooms the size of saucers, elaborate bouquets of red peppers to cheer a winter kitchen, chicken breasts stuffed with proscuitto, fontina and artichoke hearts (neatly tied with fine white string and garnished with a single sage leaf). I got up early to make a run here before I was heading back to Paris, and bought so much food that I ended up having to jam a lot of it into my computer bag, which created a slightly surreal scene at security at Florence airport (“Aspetta!! You’re flying sausages back to Paris?!?!?” said the security guard who looked at me like I’d totally lost my mind). Yes, I was flying sausages back to Paris, along with Parmesan, olive oil, porcinis, a bouquet of peppers, a big hunk of proscuitto, a bag of tiny puntarelle, and a variety of other treasures. This is one of my favorite markets in all of Europe, and after making my haul, I sat in a nearby park and enjoyed a hot tripe sandwich from a nearby vendor before I headed back to the airport.

This was my second such market run in a week. I’d recently been in Budapest where the center market has been beautifully renovated, and there, too, I bought all sorts of treats to enjoy at home–3 summer truffles for 8 Euros, a long salami, several bottles of Tokai wine, some smoked cheese, etc.

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Browsing through LE FIGARO’s Sunday supplement, LE FIGARO Magazine, France’s pretty miserable excuse for a good Sunday read, I came across a back-and-forth moderated interview with Pierre Gagnaire, chef extraordinaire, and Catherine Dumas, a Paris politican, on the subject of the French application to have the country’s food classed as part of mankind’s patrimony by UNESCO. 

Suffice to say that I think this is an absurd idea from many points of view. How can anything as vital and alive as cooking be classed as part of human heritage? What French cooking does Mme. Dumas have in mind–farmhouse cooking, Escoffier cooking, bistro cooking, Corsican cooking? It’s a ludicrous and chauvinistic feint that needs to be stopped in its tracks before the UNESCO label becomes any more debased–how, for example, could the UNESCO list of world heritage sites equally value Angor Wat and downtown Le Havre!?!?

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