La Table des Anges, Paris

Unfortunately it doesn’t happen very often, which is why I appreciate the very rare pleasure of spontaneously deciding to try a restaurant in Paris even more. As a food writer, you see, I’m obviously obliged to keep up with the latest new addresses, and since I don’t like going to restaurants on the weekend if I can avoid it–as a rule of thumb, Parisians generally cook or entertain at home then, which leaves the city’s restaurants to suburbanites or tourists, and I’m also too busy to go out to lunch, this leaves me five available meals per week to test the latest openings. This may sound adequate, but recently a whole week went by during which I didn’t find a single meal that was worthy of writing up here, even if only in negative terms.  

Yesterday, though, after we couldn’t get into “Mud,” which opened here yesterday, Bruno and I decided to go for a long walk after having spent a print-drunk day at home. Knowing that the fridge was bare, I hoped the Tunisian green grocer at the bottom of the rue des Martyrs would be open so that we could buy some asparagus and rustle up a simple dinner at home. But he’d already closed, so we keep walking up the rue des Martyrs with the idea of doing sort of a H shaped walk home. Along the way, I found myself regretting the two branches of Fuxia that have opened here–the food’s okay, but it is a chain, and also thinking that it had been a very long time since I’d last eaten at Le Cul de Poule, which was packed last night. The menu there didn’t really speak to me, though, and Bruno had already said he didn’t want to eat at a restaurant, so we keep moving, and then it started to rain again, so we stopped under the awning of La Table des Anges to wait out the shower, and of course I read the menu posted outside. It looked really good, and there was a reasonably priced 32 Euro prix-fixe, so I turned to Bruno, who said “Non” even before I’d opened my mouth. “Well, why ‘Non,’? We don’t have anything to eat at home, it’s getting late, I’m hungry, this place looks good.” “We still have some salad.” He could live on lettuce and other leaves, but I can’t and won’t so I told him I’d invited him to dinner and stepped inside.

La Table des Anges, Paris

Seated at a wooden table with Kraft paper place mats by one of friendly owners, who immediately brought us a complimentry serving of speck and salami to nibble while we studied the menu, I liked the look of this place. The exposed stone walls gave it a warm atmosphere, and the slicing machine by the chalkboard announcing the daily specials inspired confidence, too. Still, tempted though I may have been, I was not going to order langoustine risotto in a Paris restaurant I didn’t know–I’ve had good risotto exactly once in Paris during twenty-five futile years of trying, and so instead decided on the asparagus veloute and the brandade de morue, which is one of my favorite dishes. Bruno chose the homemade duck terrine and the quenelles de brochet (pike perch dumplings), and we ordered a bottle of Fleurie, a perfect Spring time wine, from the short but interesting wine list. Happily, the bright cherry-jam nose of the Fleurie dissolved whatever peevishness Bruno was still nursing over this impromptu dinner outing, and then things took a decided shift for the better when our starters arrived.

Studded with pistachios, Bruno’s duck terrine was homemade, beautifully seasoned (thyme, green pepper corns), generously served and accompanied by a ramekin of tangy onion jam. My froathy soup had a superb depth of flavor, too, and the bread served with these dishes was excellent crusty baguette with a lacy crumb and a faint perfume of wood smoke. I overheard the couple sitting in the corner across from us congratulating themselves for having found this place, too, and grinned as I watched the owner serving them each a complimentry tot of fiery hazelnut eau de vie that had been made by monks somewhere in the Yonne. I hoped we’d get to taste it, too.

Menu at La Table des Anges, Paris

Since brandade de morue, that sublime mixture of baked olive-oil lashed whipped potatoes, salt cod and garlic that’s perhaps best sampled in Nimes, can be a sorry business when it’s not made with real care, I hoped our luck would hold with the main courses. Ditto Bruno’s quenelles de brochet, which can be leaden and tasteless when made from industrial ingredients in industrial quantities. This apprehension surely explained Bruno’s alarm when the waiter revealed his enormous quenelle in a covered Staub casserole. As if reading his mind, however, he reassured Bruno that it was homemade and also explained that the accompanying sauce had been made with broth and a little cream but no flour. The quenelle’s delicate sauce was also garnished with mushrooms, carrots, baby onions and a potato. 

Potently garlicky and almost airy in its lightness, the brandade was superb, as was Bruno’s quenelle. When we claimed a well-fed pause before dessert, the owner returned to the table with two glasses of Fleurie from another producer, a thoughtful gesture, and we complimented him over his chef. “Thank you, yes, he’s very talented,” said the proprietor, who told us his name is Yan Duranceau, a young up-and-comer who has already worked at Le Grand Véfour, the Plaza Athénée and Taillevent.

Both of us finished up with fine slices of brebis d’estive, which is made by Christine Arripe at her Ferme de la Montagne Verte in the Ossau valley and shipped directly to this restaurant in Paris. The particularity of this rich but subtle ewe’s milk cheese is that it’s only made during the transhumance period from June to September in the up-mountain valleys of the Bearn. Not surprisingly, it has won a Slow Food label, and it’s just superb.

And finally, two slugs of that mysterious hazelnut eau de vie, which made our eyes water and tasted exactly the way a rafter in the attic of Burgundian barn might if you gave it a good lick–grass, dust, caramel, smoke, it was just lovely, and we walked home with the fuzzy happiness of having inadvertently discovered a delightful new everyday restaurant in our neighborhood embroidered with the warm halo induced by the monks’ skills with a still.

La Table des Anges, 66 rue des Martyrs, 9th, Tel. 01-55-32-24-89. Metro: Pigalle or Notre Dame de Lorette

www.latabledesanges.fr, Closed Sundays and Mondays. Lunch menu 16 Euros, prix-fixe menu 32 Euros. Average a la carte 45 Euros. 

   Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris.(Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Enrico Bernardo of Goust

I’ve known and admired Italian born sommelier and restaurateur Enrico Bernardo for a long time, or ever since I first met him when he was working at the Four Seasons George V Hotel, the setting from which he won the prestigious title of Meilleur Sommelier du Monde (world’s best sommelier) in 2004 at the remarkably young age of twenty-seven, with this honor following on the heels of Best Sommelier in Europe, 2002; Best Sommelier in Italy, 1996-97; and Master of Port, Italy 1995.

Goust, Paris

For starters, there’s an ambience of worldly hospitality in the good-looking and stylishly decorated dining room on the first floor of a Napoleon III townhouse on a quiet street in the heart of Paris. The staff are polite and precise but also warm and relaxed, a service style that’s an important prerequisite for enjoying the highly curated meals Bernardo serves here. To wit, Goust is all about wine and food pairings, so the best way of dining here is to opt for a tasting menu with a different pour being served with every course.

In the kitchen at Goust

The meal shifted to a more decidedly Gallic register with a gorgeous dish of poached egg with a generous garnish of black truffle on a bed of long-stewed beef and then a beautifully cooked duckling breast–juicy and rare, with a light jus and an intriguing garnish of lightly mentholated shiso leaves. The 2011 J.M. Doillot Volnay that was served to accompany these dishes was delightful and made a fascinating segue from the spectacular 2010 Weinbach Pinot Gris that has proceeded it (the wine flight began with a nice 2011 Louis Michel Chablis, followed by a 2011 Ferriato Grillo from Sicily, and a Lurton Rueda, the later being the least interesting pour). And dessert…to tell you the truth, I was so smitten with the final pour, a Graham’s Loans Tawny Port, a real invitation to musing and meditation, or as was the case with Ammo, another round of lively tale telling, that I finished this charming chocolate composition with my mind in a pleasant muddle and my camera lying idly on the table (Unless you do a blog yourself, you can’t imagine how tiresome it can sometimes be to be obliged to snap away all through your dinner instead of just enjoying it).

 As is true of any really great restaurant, Goust would be as good for a romantic night out as it is for a business meal. The lighting is good. The good bourgeois bones of the room with its handsome fireplace and parquet floor have been tweaked by the sort of 70s lighting fixture you’d expect to see in the old East German parliament building., which makes it witty looking. There’s a nice buzz in the room, too, and it’s a winningly adult, fairly priced and terrifically sincere restaurant that succeeds for being something completely unique in Paris. I can’t wait to go back, although it’s likely that my next meal will be in the new tapas bar that will soon open on the ground floor at this same address. N.B. Berardo has another card up his sleeve, too, which is a complete reboot of his first restaurant, Il Vino, in the 7th arrondissement. Suffice it to say that Italy will dominate the menu, and that the new place will be a lot of more relaxed than Il Vino, which I always liked but always found a bit too serious. Or a place I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed going with Ammo, one of my favorite partners in gastro crime.

Restaurant Goust, 10 rue Volney, 2nd, Tel. 01-40-15-20-30, Metro: Opera or Tuileries, Closed Sunday and Monday. Lunch menuy 35 Euros, Prix-fixe menus 75 Euros, 130 Euros (with wine), average a la carte 85 Euros (wine included), www.enricobernardo.com

   Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet  magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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The crowd at Bones, Paris

Last summer I had the insane good luck of going somewhere I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d see in this lifetime: Tasmania, the stunningly beautiful island which looks like a piece of Australia that snapped off and floated 150 miles south. Flying down to Hobart, Tasmania’s largest city, from Sydney to meet my friends Peter and Mike for a week’s exploration of this heart-breakingly gorgeous place, I sat next to a chatty lady who poured a tiny bottle of gin into her orange juice and told me she’d moved to the island from Melbourne a year earlier for ‘private reasons.’ And when I didn’t touch that bait, she changed course and went on and on about the island’s wonderful food and wine. I had, to be sure, heard friends in Sydney rave about Luke Burgess at Les Garagistes, but nothing prepared for me for the unselfconscious and sinewy genuis of the head-to-tail farm-to-table ethos of brilliant little restaurants like Ethos or the wonderful Pigeon Hole Cafe, which served me one of the best caffe macchiato I’ve ever had. To wit, the best young Australian chefs not only source as carefully and locally as possible, they grow and make as much of what they serve as they possibly can, and its the pervasive seriousness of Tassie’s artisinal food culture that ultimately makes the island such a superb place to eat.

Curiously enough, I found myself replaying these summer meals as I walked through the snow near Place Leon Blum in the 11th arrondissement the other night on my way to Australian born chef James Henry’s new restaurant Bones. Following my trip down under, I had a keener understanding of exactly why I’d liked Henry’s cooking at Au Passage, where I’d first come across him after he’d moved on from a stint at Spring, so much–he’s a quintessentially Australian chef in terms of his relationship with the produce he uses and his cooking and hospitality style, which is warm, direct, and completely unpretentious.

Chef James Henry of Bones, Paris

James’s food is very nice, too. For all of the forearm tatoos, dude strut and punk-rock sound-track (fun!), Henry is a damned serious eye-on-the-ball chef, which is why his constantly evolving prix-fixe menu is a challenge he lives up to.

 I really liked this flirty little hors d’oeuvre of shaved celery bulb with smoked trout and trout eggs, was happy to taste his griddled squid with baby onions and squid’s ink again (a version of same was on the menu at Au Passage), and his yellow pollack (lieu jaune, in French) with candy-cane carrots from potager princess Annie Bertin was very good eating, too, as part of his 40 Euro prix-fixe menu. The dish that really bore Henry’s signature, however, was the pigeon with kale–a big crinkly leaf of this still little-known in the Old World vegetable that was a sight for sore eye, and salsify with a punch-you-in-the-nose-mate sauce of blood, bird juice and gizzards; I loved it.

In fact I think Henry really likes giving his clients the bird, as it were, and when we had a chat, he told me that once he knows his following here better, he’d love to serve a lot more offal and other bits and pieces that might rough up a young French crowd that’s been slowly sucuumbing to one of the most heinous of all American vices–chicken breasts. The only reason I learned to eat–and love, snouts and feet and innards of all sorts is that I moved to France, so the idea that a younger French generation is becoming disaffected with barnyard eating is an honest heart-ache for me.

Since my date was flu-ish we skipped the cheese course from the Auvergne, and side-swiped dessert instead. A composition of almonds, coffe and lemon, it was just fine, but nothing memorable–I’ve never asked him, but I just don’t feel Henry to be someone who cares very much about the sweet end of a meal. Instead he’s all about the energy and agitation of getting the feed started and the almost literal blood-and-guts of making sure you’re well fed. So despite the fact that his cooking isn’t very precise and lacks the cool-operator suave of Louis-Philippe Riel at Le 6 Paul Bert, this place matters most as the launch pad for a young man who is quite certainly fated to become a very successful and well-known chef, whether this future unfolds in Paris or elsewhere. It’s also just a big sweet gulp of fresh air for anyone who wants Paris to ignore the 3 Bs–Berlin, Barcelona and Brooklyn, and coin its own idea of a grandly Gallic good time at the beginning of this new century as surely as it did the last one.

43 rue Godefroy Cavaignac, 11th, Tel. 09-80-75-32-08. Metro: Charonne or Voltaire. Open Tuesday-Saturday for dinner, bar up front is open from 7pm-1am. Prix-fixe dinner 40 Euros for four course, 47 Euros with cheese. www.bonesparis.com

  Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet  magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Le Grand Bistro Breteuil, Paris

For many years, Le Bistro de Breteuil has been a very well-liked restaurant in the silk-stocking 7th arrondissement due to its lovely location overlooking the Place de Breteuil, its charming sidewalk terrace for al fresco dining in good weather, and most importantly of all, its perfectly decent good value prix-fixe menu. For 42 Euros, you got an aperitif, starter, main course, dessert, half-bottle of decent plonk, and a coffee, and the quality was respectable enough so that it pulled as many staffers from UNESCO and parsimonious loden-wearing owners of those vast neighboring flats overlooking the ur-bourgeois Avenue de Breteuil as it did tourists. It was also a perfect place for any group dinner, because there wouldn’t be any tiresome haggling about who owed what, and offered some of the best people watching in Paris.

Now, restaurateuers Willy Dorr and his son Garry have rebranded this address, along with three of the other bistros they own, and the reboot means a new name, Le Grand Bistro Breteuil, and a new decor–out goes the sort of anonymous, inspired by one of those Louis somethings decor in favor of a louche lounge look that spins on a black, red and white color scheme and low lighting, an effect that comes off as both aspirationally Costes and urban Saint Tropez. They’ve also given the place a serious gastronomic gussying up in terms of a new 42 Euro menu that represents the apotheosis of a seemingly accelerating local trend towards giving a big shout out to one’s brand-name suppliers. So on the new menu at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil you get oysters from David Herve, vegetables from Joel Thiebault, olive oil from the Chateau d’Estoublon, cheese from Marie-Ann Cantin, Poujauran bread and butter from Jean-Yves Bordier. You can also order a steak, veal chop or pigeon sourced from star butcher Hugo Desnoyer for a 9 Euro supplement to the main menu, or content yourself with meat from Frank Samoyeau.

Terrace at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil

I have very mixed feelings about the branding game, since on the one hand, all of the people mentioned above do seriously excellent produce, and it’s extremely important to make people aware of all of the variables that can affect the quality and healthfulness of what they eat, and yet on the other hand, the whole branding business seems to be getting wearisomely out of hand. I mean even the lousy little menus on Air France now note the brand names of all the spirits, soft drinks and liquors they serve, i.e. Cola de Chez Pepsi, or some such. And the simple fact of the matter is that branding has always been designed to incite and assure loyal consumption of the branded product, whether its laundry soap, a hotel room, or, more recently, a restaurant meal. When it comes to cooking, however, you can stock a kitchen with all of the super-luxe pedigreed produce you like, but it’s sort of a lost cause, if the cook isn’t any good. And much more alarming than that, in some restaurants, branded produce seems to be intended as some sort of surrogate for real cooking. Or in other words, ‘Well, of course it’s going to be good! it’s Poulet Bio du 9eme Arrondissement d’Alec Lobrano (TM)!”

Anyway, I’ve never counted my chickens before they’ve hatched, and since they’re not going to as long as I’m living in Paris, I went off to meet a bunch of friends for lunch at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil with a lot of curiosity. Would this be an If-it’s-not-broken, don’t-fix-it story, or a substantial improvement to a deservedly long-running restaurant?

Well, I have to hand it to the Dorrs and to their culinary consultant, the charming and very talented chef Jean-Jacques Jouteux, since the food here is not only solidly good but even a little better than that for the fact of being made with such high quality ingredients. And the service is charming and well-drilled, too, which makes this place just the ticket for the very same demographic it so thoroughly pleased before being revised. To be sure, this is a meat-and-potatoes restaurant and not a place to come in search of cuisine d’auteur, and I also have a feeling that some of the locals aren’t going to like the rather flashy new decor. But putting that to one side, Le Grand Bistro Breteuil has been successfully retooled as a useful work horse of a restaurant for a century when Paris cooking is so auspiciously shading towards the locavore, organic and generally healthy. And hey, where else are you going to find black Hawaiian sea salt on the table without boarding the hot-air balloon of haute cuisine?

Girolles at Le Grand Bistro Breteuil

For an extra 4 Euros, I got a huge plate of French (as opposed to eastern European) girolles as a starter, an excellent buy in my book, while pals were delighted with their lobster Bellevue–a real Belle Epoque beauty of a dish, that one (+9 Euros); Thiebault vegetables with sauteed squid; and very good foie gras. None of these dishes bore any particular chef’s signature, but rather they demonstrated a well-disciplined kitchen, solid technical competence and honest respect for product.

Main courses were first-rate, too, including my perfectly cooked Desnoyer veal chop, an estimable grilled sole with beurre noisette, griddled sea bass with sauce vierge and a very good Desnoyer steak sauteed with Sarawak pepper. Appealing side dishes added to the festive, generous nature of this meal, too–you get a choice of potato puree made with Bordier butter, real frites, wok-sauteed Thiebault vegetables, sauteed spinach with green onions or arugula dressed with Chateau d’Estoublon olive oil and organic lemon. The house Bordeaux was just fine, and we hemmed and hawed over the dessert selections for a while, because there were so many things that sounded good. In the interest of research–visitors to Paris just love crepes Suzette, and I do, too, I ordered same, while the others had the daily special of baba au rhum, a superb tarte fine with organic apples and freshly made vanilla ice cream, and profiteroles with more of that just-made vanilla ice cream and Valrohna chocolate sauce.

So, great food? No, but good food, and with that swell terrace, late serving hours seven days a week, and a 19 Euro children’s menu, all I can say to the Dorrs is, shame about the decor, but hey, come on, baby, light my fire; this is a respectable and very useful restaurant.

   Alexander Lobrano was Gourmetmagazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Destin Ekibat, left, and Santiago Torrijos of L’Atelier Rodier

The 37 Euro prix-fixe menu was immediately appealing, too, so that even if an amuse bouche of foamy under-seasoned cauliflower soup under-whelmed, both of us like our nicely executed first courses—a tidy rectangle of dressed crab, which needed salt, on a bed of chunky celery root and cubbed Granny Smith apple for Odile and an open ravioli of wild mushrooms with a lemon-verbena spiked cream sauce and garnish of Spanish ham, which also needed salt, for me. Aesthetically soignee, made with well-sourced produce and generously served, both dishes were pleasant but also previewed the pardonable but recurring problem in this winsome young kitchen: a timidity with seasoning.

Odile suggested that the Spanish ham on my ravioli would have been better frizzled—she was right, for reasons of both texture and the richness of a little fat, and I added that the lemon-verbena sauce needed the texture of some piment d’Esplette or some other quiet fire. Herbs—maybe chives and cerfeuil, would have given similar relief to her crab, but in the end both dishes were well-prepared.

L’Atelier Rodier Chicken pot au feu with bouillon

If Ekibat and Torrijos are cooking this well in early days on their own, I think they’ll be doing some really spectacular food within a few months time as they become more confident, this kitchen gets broken in and they understand their clientele. I certainly intend to be on hand to find out, too, but in the meantime, my next stop will be at Premices, the other new restaurant in the rue Rodier and a louche, cool-operator looking place just aross the street from the sincere and very sweeting L’Atelier Rodier.

17 rue Rodier, 9th, Tel. 01-53-20-94-90. Metro: Anvers, Cadet, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Open for lunch Thursday-Saturday; for dinner Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.latelier-rodier.com

Lunch menu 18 Euros, dinner menu 37 Euros, five-course tasting menu 55 Euros, average a la carte 40 Euros.

 Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris.(Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Le Bistro Urbain

Le Bistro Urbain

Then the good-value chalkboard menu proposed a lot of dishes that were a perfect bull’s eye in terms of the type of meal we were gunning for–exalted French comfort food. So three of us had the marinated salmon with an excellent remoulade sauce and a trio of freshly baked miniature rolls, and the third tucked into an excellent warm salad of deboned rabbit with rosemary on salad leaves. Though I had not gone to dinner with my professional food writer’s cap on, I couldn’t help but noticing that the food was really well sourced, and eventually asked one of the owners if he worked with Terroirs d’Avenir, the ur trendy and excellent super well-sourced provisioner to many of Paris’s best young chefs.

Like the magician who’s afraid that the audience might be on to how he pulled the rabbit out of his hat, he was initially startled by the question, but then answered with a nod and a grin while he scrutinized our table for a clue as to why we might know of this wonderful little company, a cook’s secret. Our main courses, by chef William Ransonne, ex-Les Parisiennes, were very good, too.

A busy night at Le Bistro Urbain

Bruno and Laurent went wild–with partridge and wild dove respectively, for a reasonable supplement to the prix-fixe menu, Carole was happy with her maigre, and I scarfed down a juicy onglet (hanger steak) served with baby potatoes and a creamy sauce of mustard, cream and deglazed meat juices.

Desserts were excellent, too–petit pot de crème à la chicorée (chicory flavored custard) and ravioles aux coings sauvages (dessert ravioli stuffed with wild quince), and by the end of our meal, we were in really good spirits. “This was a really good meal,” exulted Laurent, adding, “The food was great, but it’s also really wonderful see the renewal of the neighborhood bistro by a new generation of talented chefs and restaurateurs.”

It is indeed.

103 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, 10th, Tel. 01-42-46-32-49, Metro:  Gare de l’Est, Poissonnière & Château d’Eau, www.bistro-urbain.fr  Open Monday-Saturday for lunch and dinner, closed Sunday. Lunch menus 14.50-19 €, dinner menu 25-30 €.

 Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris.(Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Bistrot Capucine’s Berkel machine.

“Dear Alec, Looking forward to seeing you in a week, and to introducing you to my sons, especially the eldest, who’s seems to be just about as food mad as you are. I know you’ll be away the first two nights we’re in Paris, so I’ve been poking around your blog to see if I could find a relaxed reasonably priced and decidedly French restaurant just out the door from our hotel in the 1st arrondissement. You’ve written about some terrific sounding spots in the 1st in your book and on your blog, but what I really need is a ‘normal people’ restaurant. Anything trendy would be lost on me and the boys, as would anything too cutting edge. Sorry to bother you with this, but maybe you’d have an idea of a friendly sort of meat-and-potatoes spot that won’t break the bank but will serve us some good food, and, for dear old Dad who’ll be running this excursion and is, as you know, fond of the grape, a nice bottle of wine!”

This was the message I received a couple of weeks ago from Todd, a college friend from Pittsburgh who was taking his sons to Paris for the first time while his wife was on a long business trip in Asia, and it got me to thinking about how rare ‘normal people’ restaurants have become in the heart of Paris. With a few wonderful exceptions, only chain restaurants or slickly designed places peddling the ersatz health food that’s become the new Gallic noon-time normal for office workers–smoothies, salads, soup, etc., can afford to set up shop these days on this prime turf, and this really can make it a challenge for visitors staying in any of the many hotels in the heart of Paris, or that turf defined by the Madeleine, Place de la Concorde, the Opera Garnier and the Place Vendome, to find a reasonably priced, good quality French meal. So I gave this request some thought. I like the Bistrot Volnay a lot, but knew it would be too fashionable for Todd and his boys. Then I remembered. As luck would have it, however, I actually had found a swell little bistro in this neck of the woods a few weeks back, Le Bistrot Capucine.

I’d met a friend who’s a hotel executive for lunch, and he told me that this friendly little spot with a gorgeous red Berkel slicing machine on the bar (anyone want to know what I’d like for Christmas? Yes! And the machine’s painted the very same red as Santa Claus’s jacket. Alas, these things run around $5000)–always a good sign, is not only his go-to spot for lunch but favorite new place to have a cave-man dinner, since it just started serving a swell small plate and côte de bœuf only menu in the evening.

Chef Jean-Marc Berthelot of Bistrot Capucine.

That pretty Indian summer day, I loved chef Jean-Marc Berthelot’s market-driven menu, and we had a terrific lunch–roasted smoked mozzarella with artichoke cream and cherry tomatoes, poached cod with really nicely made squid’s ink risotto, and some brie de Meaux to see us through a last glass of a wonderful bottle of Minervois. It was while we were lingering over the rest of our wine and a coffee that we fell into conversation with the amiable Berthelot, who opened this restaurant in 1998 and who recently went through a royal battle with his landlord to prevent himself from being priced out the neighborhood.  The reason that this later subject came up is that I’d been talking about how all of the ‘real people’ places in the neighborhood had been priced out of existence, and specifically reminisced about the excellent traiteur where I used to buy lunch almost every day when I worked in the rue Cambon. The nice lady who owned this place smoked the ham she sold in the chimney of her country house and made all of the salads–celeri remoulade, potato salad, grated carrot, etc., from scratch everyday and they were delicious.

Freshly sliced ham at Bistrot Capucine

Berthelot, whose interesting and accomplished career includes stints at Chez Pauline–the great now-gone bistro in the rue Villedo, Guy Savoy, various London kitchens and as a private chef on Caribbean yachts sailing out of Saint Martin, despairs of the economic gentrification that’s making it hard to find a good meal in the heart of Paris, and this is why he not only put up a fight to keep his restaurant, but takes pride in serving only the very best organic produce, which he buys himself at the Marche de Vincennes or the Marche d’Aligre, and sourcing his meat at the Boucheries Nivernaises. He obviously loves his work as a chef and a host, so it came as no surprise when he mentioned that execs from nearby Chanel like to privatize his place for let-their-hair-down feasts in the evening every once in a while.

In need of a similar let-down-your-hair meal a month or so ago, Bruno and I headed over here for dinner and had a terrific night. We sampled almost all of the small plate starters, including big fat fleshy Sicilian olives, grilled artichoke hearts, salami and sublime ham, and then tucked into a terrific côte de bœuf. This superb mountain of first rate meat came cooked perfectly medium rare with a generous side of sea-salted roasted baby potatoes and a chlorophyll bright sauce verte that was vivid with the tastes of flat parsley, chives, chervil and a little basil and tarragon. It met the char on the meat as a real treat, too. But since this dinosaur dinner weighed in at 900 grams, or almost two pounds, we struggled to finish it despite the fact that it was juicy flavorful meat with a perfect texture–it firm enough to require a sharp knife but was easy work under the blade.

Over coffee and a slug of great Basque eau de vie, we chatted with Berthelot and his wonderfully wry bar tender, and beyond politics and food, everyone railed about how no one makes time for a good time anymore–work has just about gobbled up everyone’s lives, and about how they’re fewer and fewer ‘real’ streets in the heart of the Paris anymore. By this we meant, streets with shops that sell things that you actually need and/or can afford, but a few survive, including the rue Vignon and the rue Caumartin, both of which we all like a lot.

So on the way home, I ressolved to try and cover more ‘real people’ restaurants on this blog, and I also sent a message to Todd about the Bistrot Capucine. A few days later, I had a response.

“Alec, Thanks so much! We were pretty jet-lagged when we wandered into Bistrot Capucine, but Jean-Marc was so welcoming, speaks great English, and his beef was some of the best any of us have ever eaten. We liked this place so much we went for lunch a day later. I persuaded the boys to try Jean-Marc’s cod steak with risotto and they loved it! Big step for American teenagers who will only eat pasta, pizza and burgers at home! See you on Friday and maybe we can talk them into some foie gras…or keep it all for ourselves! Best, Todd”

22 rue des Capucines, 2nd, Tel. 01-49-26-91-30. Métro: Madeleine or Opéra. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Lunch menu 28 Euros; average la carte dinner 30 Euros

  Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

The post Alexander Lobrano’s Letter from Paris: That Great Little Place Just Around the Corner appeared first on Everett Potter's Travel Report.

Chef Katsuaki Okiyama of Abri

Two of the most interesting things going on in the Paris restaurant scene this rentree are the turbo-speed rate with which the 10th arrondissement continues to go gourmand and the wonderful acceleration of the internationalization of the culinary talent pool in Paris. As I’ve mentioned before, in much the same way that Paris has long been the global beacon for talent in the fashion business, it’s now attracting ambitious and talented young chefs from other countries in such numbers that it’s no longer a surprise to learn the chef who just cooked your dinner in Paris is Mexican or Italian or American or, most likely of all, Japanese. The Japanese, you see, continue to revere French cooking with a seriousness and passion that’s long since dwindled in other countries, and this is why talented young Japanese chefs come to France in droves to do apprenticeships in the country’s restaurant kitchens and also why so many of them stay on to open their own restaurants. It make great sense, too, since the the culinary cultures of the two countries venerate best quality produce, admire technicity, and are profoundly fascinated by aesthetics of everything edible.

Beet with tomato and crabmeat in miso dressing at Abri

Abri is located in the 10th

Millefeuille at Abri

Okiyama’s cooking was so excellent, in fact, that I was already a semi-ecstatic convert by the time dessert arrived. Instead of being just a sweet little P.S., however, it delivered an unexpected knock-out punch. We’re talking about the best millefeuille I just might ever have eaten–a magnificent rubble of delicately caramelized buttery brown pastry leaves garnished seconds earlier with vanilla-flecked creme patissiere and lazer fine slices of dried and fresh nectarine. This was easily the best happy ending I’ve enjoyed all year, in fact, and it underlined the 360 degree excellence of this miniature kitchen and its remarkably self-exigent high-performance staff. This inflection of charm, excellence and affordability won’t last long, so go now.

92 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, 10th, Tel. 01-83-97-00-00. Metro: Gare du Nord, Poissonnière or Cadet. Closed Sunday. Four-course lunch menu 22 Euros, six-course dinner menu 38.50 Euros.

  Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

The post Alexander Lobrano’s Letter from Paris: Abri, a Superb Little Restaurant with a Brilliant Young Chef appeared first on Everett Potter's Travel Report.

Le Temps des Cerises. Photo by Alexander Lobrano.

I have to admit that my immediate reaction when I first laid eyes on Le Temps des Cerises in the rue de la Cerisaie in the Marais was wariness. There was just no way any restaurant with a setting as winsomely pretty and well-preserved as this little 18th century house with geraniums in its second-story windboxes and a picture-perfect mosaic facade could possibly be anything but an egregious tourist trap. Except that it isn’t. Indeed, my opinion changed from the moment I stepped inside and charming young owner Grégory Detouy welcomed us and promptly brought us an excellent carafe of Rhone valley Viognier, along with some crunchy radishes and a shotglass of salt to dip them in, always a good sign.

My doubts revived, however, when we studied the menu, because the prices were so reasonable. Again, if this place existed in the sad mad mode of a prima-donna tourist hell-hole like Chartier, it struck me as extremely unlikely that the food could be very good. I kept all of this to myself, though–Bruno had been wanting to try this place, and decided there was some very real consolation in the beauty of the snug old-fashioned dining room with a zinc topped bar just inside the front door, tawny walls, bare wood tables with bent-wood chairs, and a beautiful art-nouveau framed chalkboard on the wall. The appealingly diverse crowd was also almost entirely Parisian, too, and the small packed room radiated an atmosphere of bona-fide bonheur.

Detouy returned again to see if we had any questions about the menu. I asked about the specialities of the restaurant and he cited the escargots, boudin noir facon Parmentier (shepherd’s pie made with blood pudding) and steak Paname, an entrecote garnished with a vinaigrette of shallots, garlic and fresh herbs. He also told us that he was a chef by training but had fall in love with the idea of running a real old-fashioned bistro while working at Chez Janou, and had decided to take the leap and become an owner when this place became available two years ago. Our curiosity encouraged by several glasses of the good white wine, we continued asking questions and learned that the small charming house was originally built during the Middle Ages, had once been an annex to a Celestine convent and first became a bistro in 1830. To his credit, he also never once let on that he might be impatient or alarmed by these two garulous and slightly bibulous men, Bruno and me.

Inside Le Temps des Cerises, with its Art Nouveau chalkboard. Photo by Alexander Lobrano.

Since I’ve spent so much of the summer traveling outside of France, I was aching for my first course, a grandly Gallic warm salad of Morteau sausage and potatoes, and it was superb–the smoky sausage from the Jura was obviously of good quality, it came with a nice little nosegay of fresh herbs and salad leaves and was very generously served. Bruno liked his seared sliced tuna on eggplant caviar, too, and the contrast between these two dishes well-expressed chef Pascal Brebant’s smart menu. Brebant, who trained with Marc Veyrat, offers a run of bistro classics side-by-side with modern dishes like lamb marinated in lime juice with spices and the salmon steak with sage and a Porto vinegar spiked cream sauce that Bruno enjoyed as his main course.

Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris”  (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best  restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, Hungry for Paris. (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

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Le Petit Chablisien, Paris

By Alexander Lobrano

Served with good bread, my terrine de Campagne with mesclun was excellent–it had a nice coarse texture with just enough fat to brag its porcine origins and give it a pleasant unctuous texture, and Mme. Manhattan’s brandade de morue was clearly home-made and gallantly garlicky and was similarly attractively plated and generously served. Even though we found ourselves in a really engrossing conversation about the pros and cons of ‘Social Media,” our main course–pollack with roasted new potatoes and caramelized cauliflower, was good enough to derail us for a few minutes.

 Before we returned to the conversation we’d mentally book-marked, I couldn’t help but exulting over the fact that the last few years have seen a really remarkable renewal of the good neighborhood restaurant in Paris. And to call them neighborhood restaurants, or places that are recommended should you happen to be in a particular part of town but which might not be worth going out of your way for, isn’t to denigrate them at all. Everyone wants a good dozen or so favorite fail-safe addresses just out their door, and everyone is also glad to know of a few good addresses in and around Paris’s major train stations, since SNCF food is so shamelessly awful.

Le Petit Chablisien Black Cherry Clafoutis

So as we finished a very pleasant meal over generous slices of homemade black-cherry clafoutis, we agreed that this little bistro is a great address for a pre- or post-train meal and is also good enough to bear in mind for a tete a tete after a good hard shop at the big department stores nearby, especially since we we’d been so obliviously garulous that I didn’t even notice that it was 3.30pm until we stood to leave. And when I offered our apologies to the very polite waiter who hadn’t betrayed even a flutter of impatience or exasperation, he replied “Je vous en prie,” and added that he hoped we’d enjoyed our lunch.

Le Petit Chablisien, 44 rue de Londres, 8th, Tel. 01-43-87-46-15, Metro: Saint Lazare. Closed Saturday and Sunday. Lunch menus 20 and 25 Euros; dinner menus 25 and 30 Euros, a la carte 40 Euros.

Alexander Lobrano was Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent from 1999 until its recent closing. Lobrano has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. He is the author of “Hungry for Paris” (Random House), his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants, which Alice Waters has called “a wonderful guide to eating in Paris.” Lobrano’s Letter from Paris runs every month in Everett Potter’s Travel Report. Visit his website, http://alexanderlobrano.com (Photo by Steven Rothfeld)

The post Alexander Lobrano’s Letter from Paris: Le Petit Chablisien appeared first on Everett Potter's Travel Report.