By Alexander Lobrano

Though I was very happily shacked up on the East End of Long Island for the New Year (where I ate as many Peconic Bay scallops as I could get my hands on, and also gorged myself on barbecued little-neck clams as part of a superb New Year’s Eve dinner), I’m already looking forward to an exciting new year on the Paris restaurant scene. To wit, they’re lots of major openings in the wings, and for all of those places that can make themselves known early through major PR noise, I know they’re also many talented young chefs who’ll be greeting the arrival of 2011 with no small trepidation as the one in which they decided to take the plunge and open their own restaurants. It is, of course, these small independent tables that interest me most, since even though I’ve been writing about Paris restaurants for 25 years, there’s nothing as fascinating and often moving as the birth of a new restaurant.

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.