Following the huge success of the Velib bicycle rental program in Paris, the streets of the city have become filled with cyclists. The predictable problem is that many of these peddlers haven’t been on a bicycle in years, and so occasionally make risky moves in busy city streets. To keep everyone safer, the city of Paris is going to require all cyclists to wear a bright yellow reflective jacket by the end of the summer. This explains why the street peddlers are selling these flourescent vests and why you’ll see so many of them in shop windows.

In a similar spirit of warning, I report on one of the most disappointing meals that I’ve had in Paris in a longtime. The culprit table is one of the longest running bistros on the Left Bank, Aux Fins Gourmets. I’d heard that this pricey bistro had new Alain Ducasse trained owners, and so I went in the hopes that they’d be able to revive the doddering menu of Basque and southwestern dishes that has remained unchanged for so many years.

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Bravo to Alain Ducasse for launching a very important new trend in Paris–environmentally conscious cooking. At Ducasse’s delightful Le Relais du Parc, Chef Romain Corbiere designs his entire menu around the idea of environmentally correct seasonal produce. Instead of serving fish like cod or sea bass which come from threatened stocks, Corbiere offers farm-raised salmon from an organic farm in Scotland and wild fish like rougets (red mullet) and John Dory, which are not as menaced by overfishing as other species. Corbiere’s meat and vegetables also come from small environmentally conscious producers, most of them organic.

What’s at play here is the emerging idea of inventing an environmentally consciencious cuisine for the 21st century, and on the basis of a dinner here the other night, great cooking and enlightened farming and fishing obviously go hand in hand. If environmentally correct food has long had advocates like Alice Waters and the Oldways organization in Boston, it’s only now that major French chefs are factoring both your health and that of the planet into how they design their menus.

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Chef Sylvain Sendra, formerly at Le Temps au Temps, has moved to very pretty new digs in the Latin Quarter (5th arrondissement), and with a real kitchen to spread his wings in–he formerly cooked brilliantly in one that was the size of a broom-closet–his delicious market-driven menus have never been more appealing. Occupying a pretty, spacious corner space with lots of natural light and well-dessed tables, ITINERAIRES offers a great snap shot of the best of contemporary French bistro cooking. I dined there the other night with the charming writer Monique Truong (her brilliant novel “The Dish of Salt” has me anxiously awaiting her next one), her charming husband Damian, and the indefatigible Bruno, who was thrilled to meet Monique (he loved her book, which has been translated into French, too).

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From May 2 through September 30, Le Bristol, the superb two-star restaurant at the Hotel Bristol, moves from its elegant Hungarian oak-paneled oval dining room to a tented pavilion that overlooks the hotel’s beautiful interior courtyard garden, and on a warm summer night, they’re few better places in Paris for a really special meal.

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It may never occur to those on the innocent outer fringers of publishing, but implicit in writing a book like HUNGRY FOR PARIS is the ongoing work of assuring that those restaurants I’ve recommended continue to be worthy of one of your precious meals in Paris. So on this rainy Tuesday night in June, it was a huge pleasure to go back to Le Baratin in Belleville (recommended in HUNGRY FOR PARIS)  and discover that chef Raquel Carena’s cooking is better than ever. In fact, everytime I go to this restaurant, I fall in love with her food all over again. Why? Carena, a charming and very handsome Argentine woman of a certain age, cooks from her heart and also cooks from a winsome artistic sensibility that she’s probably still unaware of. Think a sort of gastronomic Granma Moses, or a cook who paints with broad strokes of sincerity, innovative, and wit.

Artichokes barigoule–tiny pefectly whittled little artichokes–came in a gorgeously balanced vinaigrette, almost a la Greque, and marinated salmon was generously served as a thick slice with matchsticks of sauteed leek and a winey vinaigrette. Both dishes were superb, as was the bawdy buzz in the dining room (I never eat here without wanting to meet everyone in the room). Main courses were magnificent, too–pork roast with crackling, baby turnips and potatoes, fresh herbs, and pan juices added to a light vinaigrette and veal cheeks with mushrooms, carrots, baby potatoes and herbs. After gorging on a whole and exquisitely ripened Saint Marcellin that could only be described as dairy velvet, we split an apple and red-fruit crumble, a perfect from-the-heart dessert.

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During the last two weeks, I’ve been to the two restaurants that are making the most noise in Paris this Spring–the oddly named Etc. and L’Agape, and I’ve come away underwhelmed. Normally, I don’t review restaurants that I’m not at least reasonably enthusiastic about, but having noticed that both of these two new and rather expensive places seem to have done a very good job at insinuating themselves on to the To Go lists of Paris hotel concierges, I thought I might lean on the horn here to save you a meal.

It’s not that either restaurant is bad, rather they both lack passion and have fallen into a style-over-substance trap that I find wilting when it comes to good food. As anyone who has read HUNGRY FOR PARIS knows, I am passionate about good food and quite willing to excuse a dreary decor and even the occasional service error or two if the food’s really good.

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